


roots and touchstones

by sultrysweet



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Post Curse, Season 2, Slow Burn, Suspense, descriptions of violence are minimal but might be a little tough to read, sort of divorced mommies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-06-29 17:48:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 60,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15734373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrysweet/pseuds/sultrysweet
Summary: The truth is out there...and so is a dangerous threat.Trouble comes to town in the form of FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully and chaos follows their arrival at every turn. The town's at risk with the two of them poking around, but what brings them to Storybrooke could be much, much worse. While Emma and Regina have to protect the town's biggest secret, which is hard enough when logically inexplicable things start happening, they also need to watch their backs. The catalyst to their predicament lurks in the shadows.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Roots and Touchstones - Manips](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15797571) by [Dragoon23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragoon23/pseuds/Dragoon23). 



> First and foremost, go check out the incredible artwork Dragoon23 did for my fic. It's so cool and I love it!
> 
> Second, as mentioned in the tags, there will be "graphic" depictions of violence in this fic (although how graphic it is depends on the reader), but the descriptions aren't very long and there won't be very many scenes that have that kind of violence in them. Overall, those parts included, I'd say this fic is pretty tame and I included the tag just to be safe. 
> 
> Third thing to cover before all the thanks I have to give: You don't need to be familiar with the X-Files beyond the basics to (hopefully) enjoy this fic and I don't get too detailed on their side of the story. If anyone has any questions, though, reach out to me on tumblr or twitter and I'll gladly fill in any blanks. 
> 
> Huge thanks to the mods for this wonderful event. Thank you to my artist for picking my story and all their hard and beautiful work. Thanks to my beta, ariestess, and my cheerleader Lauren for their support through my early doubts and rough patches. Special thanks to Angela for coming in clutch during the week before the first final deadline and acting as both a beta and a cheerleader from then until the absolute last possible minute. You stepped up and stepped in when I needed it. I can't thank you enough for that.
> 
> Lindsey, Mari and my own personal (platonic) touchstone Shan all deserve thanks as well for talking me through planning, even more moments of doubt and endless encouragement. You're all rockstars and I'm glad I have you in my corner. 
> 
> Hopefully, everyone reading this will enjoy the X-Files/Swan Queen crossover no one asked for, at least not from me. :D

With a shared nervous look, they hold their breath as they drive over a painted orange line at the edge of the strangely named town of Storybrooke. It’s not the X they left in Oregon, their rental car doesn’t roll to a stop and the radio doesn’t crackle as the daytime lights flicker, but they pull over a short distance from the welcome sign and check their watches anyway.

“Eleven fifty-eight. Same as a few seconds ago. What have you got,” Mulder asks as he lifts his gaze from his still ticking watch to Scully’s eyes.

Her expression softens with what he assumes is relief before she answers, “Eleven fifty-nine now.”

He checks his wrist again and sees the big and little hands closer to twelve than the last time he’d checked. He finally exhales and smiles at her.

Scully closes her eyes and leans back in the passenger’s seat, bumping her head against the headrest.

Mulder shifts back into Drive and continues down the foggy, and apparently only, street into town when a flash of green catches their attention nearby. It’s followed by a rumble, like thunder follows lightning, and the ground shakes.

“Pothole?” Scully tries to make it sound like a statement, her way of logically explaining something they both know isn’t as cut-and-dry as the rest of the world is meant to believe, but only one of them ever admits aloud.

“That was no pothole, Scully.” He tries not to smile at the implication that her uncertainty might stem from her finally starting to accept all that she’s seen while working with him, especially after their recent experience in Dallas.

He sees Scully staring in the direction of the flash as though waiting to see something else. He glances in the same direction and looks through the trees lining the road for the same reason and slows down to look over more often and more closely. He’s going about twenty miles an hour when he notices a few figures in the woods. A streak of yellow and pink are the most notable among a group of maybe four—no, five—people. He spots a man with a cane limping away from the others toward the road, but the man doesn’t seem to notice them as they drive almost parallel to him and the unfolding scene.

A lithe figure springs up from the forest floor and sprints toward the group and then they’re driving too far ahead for him to see, but he sees Scully in his peripheral vision as she twists in her seat to look out the rear window.

“Anything interesting happening?” He spares his side mirror and rear view mirror a glance before he gives Scully the slightest bit more attention than either of the mirrors. They manage to lock eyes for a couple seconds and she shakes her head before sitting forward again while he directs his eyes to the road again.

“Maybe it’s a professional photo,” Scully theorizes. “A family photo or engagement photos.”

“Did you see any lighting equipment? And what kind of camera has a _green_ flash?”

“It could have been a light filter,” she suggested.

“Again, _what_ lighting equipment?”

He doesn’t get a verbal response for several seconds and looks over at her as she stares ahead with a familiar expression that tells him she’s at a loss.

“It’s odd, Mulder, but our priority is to find an escaped mental patient.”

“The reason he escaped is because no one believed him and now he’s probably here to get proof.”

“We don’t know that. Besides, he’s more likely to seek revenge against the person he holds responsible for the way he grew up.”

“Both our predictions can be true,” he rationalizes.

Scully sighs.

He doesn’t look at her that time and, instead, speeds up as they approach a three-way stop. Finally, given a choice to go a direction other than straight, he turns right and then they get closer to civilization than they’ve been in the last two and a half hours. It would have only been an hour, give or take ten minutes, if they hadn’t gotten turned around a few times.

He's flicking shells of sunflower seeds out the window at a red light a few minutes later while a glance at Scully reveals his partner is flipping through the case file with a furrowed brow and sharp focus. He can tell by the redhead’s pensive expression and lack of acknowledgement that she’s too focused to entertain him, so he sighs and drums his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel. They're sitting at the light for what feels like an eternity and there isn't any traffic or even signs of life on the road except for them.

Frustrated, Mulder urges, “Come on,” at the light and shifts anxiously in his seat before he peers through the windshield, passenger side window and his own at the surrounding businesses. He stuffs the bag of sunflower seeds into the compartment in his door most would use for maps or a water bottle and drums a little harder on the steering wheel when, finally, the light changes green.

They drive for another few minutes before they spot a redheaded man walking a Dalmatian. Mulder slows down to a near stop and prepares to park in one of the few spaces off to the right when the man stares into their car with a questioning and somewhat nervous expression.

“Think we should start with him?” Mulder looks over at Scully with an expression that’s split between amused and genuinely looking for confirmation.

 Scully gives non-verbal agreement with a small nod and specific look in her slightly widened eyes, so he parks the car.

The man stands near the curb and watches their approach. He seems to wait for them, really, and for a second Mulder thinks their trip to the middle of nowhere might go smoothly for once.

But after their fifth—and decidedly final—unhelpful interview ends with the excuse of having plans elsewhere, however, smooth isn’t a word he’d use to describe the visit so far. It’s not the first time they’d heard the excuse of having other plans in the last hour either. Their fourth interviewee had also claimed the same thing.

Scully sighs and asks him, “Think there’s somewhere with a vacancy in this so-small-it’s-nonexistent town?”

Fifteen minutes and a few wrong turns later, they end up parked on the curb down the street from a diner. For a quaint little town in the middle of nowhere, they surprisingly had to circle the block once or twice before finding a free space near the end of the block.

They're barely out of the car when they see two women talking outside the diner, hands in their pockets and in very close proximity for such a cautious interaction. As Mulder and Scully approach the outdoor eating area, empty except for those women, they overhear part of the conversation.

“Maybe you'd consider letting him stay over sometime. I have his room just- just waiting for him,” the brunette says with a hopeful tone.

That hope gets crushed in seconds when the blonde replies, “Oh, I'm...not sure that's best.”

And then the conversation turns into a fight that causes him and Scully to stop short before they can interrupt.

“Because you know so much about parenting in the five minutes you've been with him. Talk to David. At least he took care of him while you were away, like I did when you were away the first time!”

Mulder's mouth forms a shocked “O” and he looks over at Scully, who's wide-eyed and wearing a similar expression.

“Okay. Thanks for sharing,” the blonde’s terse and bitter response pulls their attention back to the pair.

“No, wait,” the brunette pleas as she starts to follow the blonde toward the diner. “I'm sorry. I…am. I'm sorry. Snapping at you, I shouldn't have done that.”

Mulder observes one tense, silent moment pass before the brunette adds, “Will you accept my apology?” Another moment passes that feels a lot like a showdown before he hears the blonde softens a little and admit, “Okay. You’re right. Archie says you’re trying to change and you are.”

“Dr. Hopper said I was trying?”

Mulder and Scully share another look. “Apparently, the therapist we just interviewed doesn’t have much respect for doctor/patient confidentiality,” Mulder mumbles to his partner who seems to agree with a slight nod and displeased look in her eyes.

His comment prevents them from hearing a few statements, but they catch up with the conversation when the blonde mentions, “You have to understand I was hesitant to invite you. I asked him, and he thought it was a good idea.”

Mulder makes a semi-strangled sound, thinking the brunette will have something to say about her shrink talking to someone about her private sessions. Instead, he hears, “Thank you. It was. I should be going.”

The brunette’s hands are back in her pockets and she spins on her heels to leave. The blonde watches her with an uneasy expression, but it’s when she turns toward the diner door and the brunette reaches the white picket archway between the sidewalk and eating area that Mulder urges Scully forward with him.

“Excuse us,” he greets as he and Scully stop the brunette from walking too far away. “I’m Agent Mulder of the FBI and this is my partner Agent Scully.”

The blonde faces them all again just as the brunette looks over her shoulder at the other woman.

“FBI?” The blonde takes several strides toward them as she asks with piqued interest.

The brunette stands where she’d stopped, holds her head high and straightens her back, but she fidgets with recognizable discomfort.

“Yes,” Scully cuts in. “We were looking into claims made by a man about this town.”

“Claims? What kind of claims?” The brunette lifts a hand from her coat pocket and rests it nervously over her stomach.

“Otherworldly ones,” Mulder truthfully informs them. “Either of you know a Greg Mendel?”

“No,” the blonde immediately answers and then looks to the brunette.

“I don’t recognize the name,” the brunette stiffly replies a few seconds later.

“Well, he claims that unexplainable things happen in this town and that someone here is responsible for the disappearance of his father,” Scully adds.

“Do you know where we could find Mayor Mills?” Mulder looks between the two strangers and catches them looking at each other again, as if trying to keep their stories straight.

The blonde seems sheepish at first as she defers to the brunette who tries to stand a little taller and straighter. Mulder doubts that’s possible, but the well-dressed woman makes the attempt anyway and surprisingly succeeds.

“You found her,” the brunette confesses. “I’m Regina Mills.”

The blonde steps up and stands evenly with the mayor before she firmly states, “And I’m Sheriff Swan. You mentioned a disappearance? When?”

“1983,” Scully supplies.

The mayor’s jaw tightens and grinds while the blonde looks like she wants to take a minute, but the sheriff remains strong at Regina’s side.

“Are you investigating the disappearance?” The sheriff displays her allegiance despite the earlier argument and the way she currently shifts as though she’d rather run fast and far away from their discussion.

“We don’t have much reason to believe Mr. Mendel nor is there any evidence to substantiate his claims,” Scully takes the lead. “Our main concern is finding this man.”

The sheriff frowns. “Why’s that?”

“We were interviewing Mr. Mendel about what he’s been insisting about your town,” Mulder jumps back in. “He made a few interesting points about some inconsistencies with a place that, oddly enough, doesn’t appear to exist except within the town’s borders. We actually had a very hard time finding Storybrooke.”

“We’re a small town,” the mayor says with a politician’s smile. “A very close-knit community. I’m sure there are a considerable number of cities and townships in this country alone most wouldn’t know about.”

“There’s a difference between limited exposure beyond town lines and not showing up on a single map,” he insists.

Mayor Mills squares her shoulders and licks her lips before her politician’s smile turns colder. “Are you really here to investigate _one_ man’s claims about this town or is there another reason you stopped by, Agents?”

Mulder shares another look with Scully and quickly clears his throat before he answers, “A little of both, actually.”

He doesn’t see Scully roll her eyes, but he can hear the attitude in her voice when she doesn’t hesitate to explain, “Our _priority_ is finding the man that gave us this information.”

“You mentioned that.” The sheriff frowns and tucks a thumb into her waistband as she cocks a hip. “Is he a suspect in a case or something?”

“Worse,” Mulder says.

“He’s a patient at a psychiatric clinic in New York,” Scully explains. “At least, he was before he slipped out in the middle of the night.”

“What?” The Mayor sounds incredulous and her eyes widen in what Mulder interprets as a flash of terror.

The sheriff, on the other hand, narrows her own eyes and takes another step closer to them. She points a finger at them as she bites out, “There’s a mentally unstable man on the loose that’s been spinning stories about this place, which you think actually hold some merit despite the source, and you lead with how much trouble it took you to get here?”

“We didn’t mean to get off track,” Scully says apologetically.

“How long has he been missing?” The sheriff barely allows Scully to finish a sentence before the blonde charges on with her concerns. “The way he’s talked about Storybrooke tells me he’s probably on his way here if he’s not already lurking around out there.”

“We were notified this morning,” Scully responds. “We came here as soon as possible.”

Emma shakes her head. “Okay, so chances are he’s nearby and he blames someone here for his father’s disappearance. They’re probably his target. If he’s been institutionalized, I can’t imagine he’s just coming to find them for a little chit-chat about what really happened. Who does he blame?”

His gaze shifts to Mayor Mills, who’s still noticeably in shock. He sees the sheriff’s attention shift as well.

He’s about to confirm any suspicions the two of them might have when the diner door swings open and a young boy thunders down the stairs with a slightly breathless exclamation.

“Mom!”

The sheriff and mayor turn to the boy in unison and he fits himself between them naturally. Each woman places a hand on one of his shoulders and talk over each other to address him.

“Henry,” the mayor greets softly and with concern.

“Kid,” the sheriff says simultaneously with more authority, although it sounds a little tired.

“I looked for you,” the boy says, more so to the mayor. “Are you leaving?” Then, the boy notices their company and stares at Mulder and Scully through the space between the blonde and brunette when he asks, “Who are they?”

Mulder flashes him a smile and, although he can’t see his partner, he assumes Scully shows Henry a similar expression. He’s also confident her smile is more disarming, even though Henry doesn’t relax much in response.

“They’re from the FBI,” the mayor gently supplies.

“FBI?”

“Law enforcement,” the sheriff clarifies.

“Like you?”

“Yeah, except the FBI is much bigger than our sheriff’s department.”

The boy looks at him and Scully again and then steps closer to the other women to stage whisper, “Why are they here?”

The women hesitate but don’t look to each other before they provide individual replies.

“We’ll talk about it later,” the blonde all but promises before the mayor calmly insists, “Go back inside, sweetheart.”

Henry looks from one woman to the other and squints. He directs his next words at the brunette and asks, “Will you come in to say goodnight before you leave?”

“Yes,” the mayor assures him with a smile Mulder only partially sees from his position, but he can still tell without a doubt it lights up the brunette’s entire face.

“Okay,” the boy agrees. He then gives Mulder and Scully one last, unsure look and casually walks back to the diner.

The women watch him re-enter the building before they take a brief moment to themselves and turn back to him and Scully. As they do, Mulder tells them, “You two have a very inquisitive son.”

Neither argues or denies his wording, but they both look a little uncomfortable. The brunette then takes a breath and changes the subject as she asks, “You say your priority is to find this man?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Scully responds.

The blonde snorts as she stuffs her hands in her back pockets and then looks over at Regina with a wide smile. “Ma'am,” the woman almost mockingly repeats.

The brunette shoots an unamused glare at the sheriff. “Will you be staying in town until you catch him?”

“It stands to reason that if Mendel is coming here then staying here allows for a higher probability for success with his capture and your protection,” Mulder shares with them.

“Then you’re in the right place,” Mayor Mills informs them. “Behind the diner is a bed and breakfast. There's an entrance on the other side of the property.”

“Thank you,” Scully says for them and then retrieves something out of the case file in her hands. She passes the mayor a wallet sized picture and continues on to say, “This is Mr. Mendel. If you see him, please don’t try to engage with him on your own.”

Mulder adds to that as he pulls out a business card and hands it to the sheriff. “Don’t hesitate to call us if you see him, or anything suspicious, or if you remember anything about him. Things like where he might go first or why he would think you had anything to do with the disappearance. Or even if you remember anything about his father.”

“We're not here to step on your toes,” Scully assures them. “We feel a responsibility to you to find him, but we don’t want to take control here. The most we'll do is ask questions and observe.”

“Considering you opened up old wounds for this guy that led him to breaking out of a mental institution, you _should_ feel responsible,” the sheriff admits with a steely expression. “Thanks.”

That one word sounds sarcastic instead of grateful and Mulder almost smirks. “I’m sure we'll be in touch,” he says a moment later, determined more than ever to investigate the suspicious town and some of its standoffish inhabitants. He adds, “Be careful,” before the pairs split up.

He and Scully walk around the fence surrounding the diner, which he only just then notices is charmingly named _Granny's_ , while the two women make their way back inside. When he and Scully enter the proper door to the bed and breakfast, no one's stationed at the front desk and it sounds like some sort of large gathering or celebration is happening on the other side of the wall separating the connected businesses.

“I wonder why they didn’t invite us to join them,” Scully teases.

He smiles when he sees her smile and then dings the bell on the desk. “For a town that so rarely gets any visitors, it's a wonder why they even have a hotel,” he muses out loud.

“Well, as far as we know this is their _only_ hotel, which is even stranger to me. You said it yourself, there's a difference between a lack of exposure outside their community and not showing up on any government maps. If they expected to have guests even semi-regularly—and with a quiet and ideal little town like this they _should_ count on tourism—wouldn’t they have more than one place for travelers to lodge? I mean, they aren’t even utilizing a full building for the guests to spend the night.”

His smile broadens. “Easy there, Scully. You’re starting to sound a little…spooky.”

She rolls her eyes and faces the desk.

He’s chuckling when an older woman with gray hair and a round figure walks up to the desk from the back area between the diner and the inn. She tugs her reddish brown, wool-knit cardigan a little tighter over her chest and eyes them like they’re intruders, not paying customers, before she grabs a book from under the desk and plops it down in front of herself.

“Name?”

“Uh, Mulder,” he answers, caught off guard by her brusqueness.

The woman looks from him to Scully and asks, “One or two rooms?”

“Two please,” Scully immediately replies.

The woman says nothing about it and just scribbles his name into what he assumes is a guest book before she looks at the hanging room keys beside her. She then scribbles in something else before she slides two keys off the wall and hands them over to Mulder. “Take your pick,” she instructs. “How long are you staying?”

“We don’t really have a time frame,” Mulder admits.

The woman narrows her eyes and rests a hand on her hip. “Well, it’ll be forty a night for each of you,” she huffs. “I suppose you can pay me daily until check out.”

Mulder forces a quick smile and hands Scully one of the keys before he gives the innkeeper his credit card.

The woman stares at it, unimpressed, as Mulder stupidly continues to hold it out for her. She doesn’t accept it and then informs him, “Cash only, hot shot.”

“Oh, uh. Okay.” He retracts the card with a furrowed brow and fumbles with his wallet when Scully sighs and effortlessly produces the eighty dollars.

“Thank you,” the woman says, noticeably kinder when speaking to Scully. Then, the woman none too quietly adds, “If I were you, I’d cut him loose. He seems as useless as the rest of ‘em.”

Scully laughs and says, “You don’t need to tell me that.”

The innkeeper cracks a small and brief smile.

“I’m sorry,” Mulder interrupts. “Are you Granny?”

Definitely the wrong thing to say to the woman who hasn’t warmed up to him in the slightest. She glares at him intensely enough that he doesn’t doubt the look would incinerate him if the woman had the ability, and if that sort of ability was even possible at all.

“Not to you,” the elderly woman says gruffly before she turns back toward the dividing wall and then around the corner.

“Okay then,” Mulder mutters as he and Scully then turn away from the desk themselves and make their way down the hallway toward a flight of stairs.

It’s only when they reach the rooms a few minutes later that they find out they’re adjoining. Within seconds, Mulder purses his lips and makes an awkward face that he’s not sure doesn’t expose an unprofessional flirtatiousness. Neither of them acts on it and Scully’s only response is to give him an unreadable expression as she opens the door to her room. Before she can disappear inside, Mulder says, “Welcome back to the X-files, Scully.”


	2. Chapter 2

Emma paces. 

She doesn’t doubt she’ll wear a hole in the diner floor when she finally stops, but the chances of that happening any time soon aren’t too high.  

“Uh, Emma? Are you okay?” She hears Henry’s voice, even with her racing thoughts screaming inside her head, but she doesn’t answer him. She can’t. Too many thoughts, too many possible outcomes. _Bad_ outcomes. “Emma?” 

“Give her a minute, sweetheart,” Regina gently instructs. Emma’s just shocked enough by the brunette’s uncharacteristic kindness that she almost snaps out of her spiral, but then Regina adds, “This is the first time in a while she’s had a real thought in that thick head of hers.” 

Emma rolls her eyes, but she also huffs out her next exhale with some relief at the familiarity and speeds up her walk the next time she spins on her heels. She takes a breath and then turns to the booth where Henry’s glaring across the table at Regina on Emma’s behalf. She feels a little guilty when she notices Regina appears somewhat chastised by it, but they have bigger issues now. “The feds are here.” 

That makes the brunette perk up. Emma almost sees a smirk in the very subtle curl of plump, wine red lips. “Yes, Miss Swan. As you’ll recall, I was there,” Regina haughtily replies. “Not everyone needs as long as the _Charming_ bloodline to process things.” 

“The _feds_ , Regina,” she unhelpfully tries to stress a point she hasn’t really made yet. She tries again. “Not only are they not from…” she looks around the diner to confirm the suits didn’t follow them inside, “the _other_ place, but they’re high ranking law enforcement. If they see how different this town is, how different these _people_ are, do you honestly think they won’t lock us up like that Mendel guy?” 

Name dropping works. Regina loses a little color at the mention of the escaped patient. 

Emma decides to press the issue now that she has the woman’s attention. “And magic users? Come on, Regina. Forget locking you up. They’ll probably take you to some military black site for experiments.” 

Regina clears her throat and weakly argues, “You’ve read way too many superhero comics.” 

“It’s not an active imagination,” Emma insists. “The government beyond the town line is all about shoot first, ask questions later and poke it with a stick when they don’t understand it. And that poking doesn’t just refer to testing. The government rules over a society that still throws freaking stones at any kind of diversity despite this country being considered a melting pot.” She shakes her head. “No, there’s no way we’re letting them see a damn thing. No villainy, no _mention_ of the forest, no referring to Mary Margaret and David as anything other than their cursed names. Oh, and no talk of the curse!” 

“So, you want us to be normal?” Henry’s voice pulls Emma’s attention to him and she immediately notices his scrunched up expression. 

“Exactly,” Emma smiles at Henry, her eyes shining brightly with hope that everything will work out just fine. 

“But...you’re not normal,” he states with a hint of confusion. 

Regina almost snorts with the force of her sudden laughter. 

“None of you are,” Henry amends, and he seems to pick up on Emma’s codeword of choice. “You’re all from...the other place. The only normal, boring one here is me.” 

“Oh, Kid,” Emma says sympathetically. 

“That’s not true,” Regina tells him with warm, motherly conviction. “You’re extraordinary.” 

“I’m just a kid,” he shrugs and looks away from both women. 

“A kid who ran off _alone_ and crossed state lines to find a skeptic he then helped to break a powerful curse,” Emma reminds him. “Sounds kinda knightly to me, really.” 

Seconds after that, Henry cracks a wide and proud smirk. “You said ‘curse’,” he pointed out. 

Regina laughs again, softer and without a chance of snorting that time. “He’s right. Congratulations, Miss Swan. You’ve already managed to break your own rules in less than ten minutes. We’re really supposed to take this ‘threat’ seriously when you can’t even be bothered to be more careful yourself?” 

Emma squeezes her eyes shut and sighs. “It _is_ serious.” When she opens her eyes again, she locks onto Regina’s and pointedly says, “You might be very insulated here, but you do know what it’s like when someone beyond Storybrooke waltzes into your town.” She gestures at herself just in case the message isn’t clear. 

Regina clenches her jaw. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. If nothing else, Madam Mayor, we need to keep a tight lid on everything _enchanted_ around here. Not just for your sake or mine or any of the others from ‘the other place.’” Emma pauses and then, in sudden harmony, she and Regina say, “For Henry.”

Within seconds, they look at him as his face twists into one of disapproval.

Emma smiles at that and ruffles his hair, which just earns her a very Mills glare. She distracts herself by checking the wall clock behind the bar and notes the late hour. It keeps her from laughing at the expression that doesn’t pack nearly as much of a punch as it does from his other mother as intended. “Alright, Kid. What do you say we go home? It’s past your bedtime and I think we’ve all had enough excitement for one night.”

Henry’s glare morphs into a pout. It does nothing to sway her, so he slumps in defeat and reluctantly slides out of the booth with his head down.

Regina stands soon after he does and smooths her skirt down with a slightly nervous expression, like she’s unsure of what to do next. Her eyes only leave Henry to glance at Emma who feels just as uncertain as the brunette appears.

Emma puts a hand on Henry’s shoulder to stop him before he barrels toward the exit and gently tugs him back a step. He glances up at her and, as soon as she has his attention, she looks at Regina. Henry takes the hint immediately and follows her gaze.

The moody ten-year-old hugs his brunette mother within seconds, which is about as long as the contact lasts. He does, however, squeeze her before he pulls away. It’s not much, but it doesn’t look like he’s hugging her strictly out of obligation at least. Regina seems to understand that, too, even though the brunette is still noticeably pained by the brevity of their interaction.

Regina lets him go and Emma doesn’t hold him back a second time, so he makes his way to the door.

Emma stays behind. She tucks her hands in her pockets again and awkwardly shuffles in front of the other woman. “I guess we could, um, meet up tomorrow? To discuss how exactly we’re going to hide…the whole town?”

Regina looks like she’s about to laugh at her. That’s how Emma interprets the quirked lips and arched brow expression, anyway. The expression doesn’t fade, but Regina doesn’t laugh either. “I think it’s a little late to hide the whole town, Miss Swan. The town line was supposed to protect us from outsiders who aren’t _you_ , but that’s clearly been compromised now that you’ve broken the curse.”

“The point is, we need to come up with a plan.”

Regina seems to think about it for a second before she replies, “Fine. Please don’t let Henry out of your sight.” The brunette motions toward the door, which is when Emma notices his absence.

“Shit,” she mutters. “Meet here for breakfast?” She asks the question as she moves in long strides toward the exit and looks over her shoulder to see Regina as the other woman answers.

“Yes,” Regina agrees. “Breakfast. Now please take care of my son while he’s in your custody.”

She hears the tiredness in the brunette’s voice as much as the pleading when she makes the demand, although it sounds startlingly more like a request. Emma tries to contain her shock and focuses instead on getting to Henry, which is easy enough as she reaches the door and pulls it open to find him sitting outside with David. She sighs with relief and looks back at Regina again to smile reassuringly at her, a silent confirmation that he’s fine. She faces forward before she can really see a reaction, but she thinks she sees mirrored relief in brown eyes before she steps back into the crisp night air.

“Thanks for staying with him,” she says. “We’re going back to the apartment. You and Mary Margaret staying here?”

“For a little while longer,” David answers as Henry moves to her side. “What’s this I hear about FBI agents in town?”

“Exactly what you heard,” she says before she gives Henry a rebuking look. She looks up at David again when she adds, “Two agents are here, and I mean _here_. They came by and asked some questions about a missing patient and the town. Regina suggested they stay at the bed and breakfast.”

“What? Is she insane? Wait, don’t answer that. Of course she is.”

Emma rolls her eyes. “They would have been more suspicious if she’d tried to run them out of town. Trust me.”

David still shows disbelief, but Emma shuts him down with a pointed look. “Okay,” he says. “So, they’re here and…there’s a missing patient?”

“A mental patient,” Emma amends. “Apparently, some guy in New York thinks something bad happened to his dad here.”

David’s eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline. “ _Did_ something bad happen to his dad here?”

Emma winces and looks down at Henry for a split second before she tells David, “It’s possible, but I don’t know. This guy came from a clinic. He could just be having a break, or he could have been here and seen something. Regina hasn’t said much. We’re meeting up tomorrow to strategize.”

David nods and then suggests, “Maybe you should be asking Regina more questions about this guy the FBI mentioned.” Emma’s about to argue, but David raises a hand and stops her. “I’m all for coming up with a strategy, but this wouldn’t be the first time Regina’s withheld information. Most recently lying about the Enchanted Forest—”

“We’re calling it ‘the other place,’” Emma interrupts and looks over her shoulder as if the agents will appear any minute. That’s a very likely and very unsettling possibility.

David sighs and corrects himself. “Okay, she lied about the other place still existing when you and Mary Margaret fell through the...you know. She might have helped me get in touch with Mary Margaret so we could find a way to bring you two back here, but that doesn’t make up for everything she’s done or change what she’s still capable of doing.”

It’s Emma’s turn to sigh and then she says, “I get it. I know nothing’s fixed. Things don’t change overnight, but can you just...calm down?” She glances at Henry again, who’s hanging off the man’s every word and therefore proving her unvoiced point to herself and her...and David.

David relaxes, removing his hands from his hips to rest casually at his sides, and nods in agreement before taking a couple steps toward the diner. “Just keep me in the loop, will ya?”

“Yeah. We’re probably going to need your help anyway. You’re still deputy, after all. And the townspeople respect you. That should help when we have to talk to them about how to deal with all this.”

“Right. Until then, goodnight, Henry. See you two at home.” He smiles at her before squeezing her shoulder and then makes his way back inside.

As he’s walking back in, Regina brushes past him on her way out. Emma stiffens as she waits for a fight that thankfully doesn’t happen. David politely apologizes while Regina says nothing, which is probably her way of being polite when Emma thinks about it. Regina also seems to pat David’s shoulder, partially touching his bicep as she does, before she descends the few but steep porch steps. A second later, the door’s closing behind David and Regina looks up just before she runs into Emma and Henry.

“Oh,” the brunette quietly says, evidently caught off guard.

“Sorry,” Emma apologizes, but she doesn’t know why. “David was out here with Henry, so I caught him up on the situation with our visitors before heading out. Which we’re doing now. Come on, Henry.”

Regina forces a smile in response. “Well, I didn’t see the need to stay any longer. It’s past my bedtime, too,” the woman jokes.

Henry doesn’t laugh.

Emma cringes and Regina clears her throat, as if that’ll disguise anything. Henry’s the only one that doesn’t seem to understand his effect on his other mother. Either that or he doesn’t care, but Emma knows that’s not likely since the kid had a lot to do with Emma protecting Regina from the mob.

“Uh. Right. Since it’s late for all of us,” Emma awkwardly starts to say, “we should probably—”

“Yes,” Regina’s quick to agree, almost as awkward as Emma; except that’s impossible for the regal woman. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Swan.” The brunette turns to Henry and smiles a vulnerable smile like the one she’d given Emma earlier that night when she’d asked if Henry could spend the night sometime. “I hope you sleep well, Henry. If you...if you need anything from me, I’m a phone call away.”

Henry nods, but that’s all he gives her.

And Regina’s apparently desperate enough to take what little she gets because she clears her throat and nods as well. She’s also the first to leave, although she makes a graceful and subtle exit. If Emma had been in her shoes, she undoubtedly would have dashed away like a track runner wearing unbearably itchy underwear.

In fact, Emma almost does that even after Regina’s halfway down the street, and she’s obvious enough about it to draw Henry’s attention, too. He’s squinting at her like he can’t believe he’s actually related to her when she looks at him, which elicits a laugh from her. “You’re looking at half your gene pool, Kid. You might get plenty from Regina, but sometimes you just can’t escape genetics.”

“Great,” he mumbles, and Emma laughs again as she tucks Henry under her arm and walks toward the loft.

* * *

Punctual as ever, even for a meeting time they never discussed, Regina’s already inside the diner when Emma gets there a little after 8 AM. She spots the older woman at the counter rather than a booth and hops onto an empty stool next to her.

“Graceful,” Regina sarcastically says in place of a proper greeting.

Emma smiles as soon as she hears the hint of amusement in the brunette’s voice. “I pride myself on being the least elegant royal,” she replies.

“Jury’s still out on that one,” Regina speaks into her mug just before taking a sip of strong smelling coffee. “It’s a toss up between you and your father.”

“Oh? You actually think there’s someone even clumsier than me?”

Regina raises an eyebrow at her. “Have you seen that man run through a forest? He acts so gallant and heroic, but he’s an oaf.”

“Right, well, we’re not here to talk about David. We need a plan.”

Just then, Ruby glides over to her with a smile that falters in favor of an uncomfortable and slightly confused expression. The waitress’ eyes dart to Regina before they return to Emma. “What can I get’cha?”

“Coffee and a grand slam?”

“You got it. You want the special hazelnut creamer?”

“Not if it’ll cost me another night at the Rabbit Hole,” Emma answers with a smirk that Ruby mirrors.

“You loved it and we both know it. Don’t blame your choices and the resulting hangover for a bad night that didn’t happen. A bad _morning_ is totally different.”

Emma rolls her eyes, still smiling, and says, “Whatever. Just the regular cream and sugar for me. I’m not taking any chances.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Ruby says with a wolfish smile and spins on her heels.

“You were deputy for a day, Rubes,” Emma reminds her as the other woman starts to pour Emma’s coffee. Ruby grins over a shoulder at her before the blonde adds, “I’ve never been your boss.”

Ruby’s grin spreads and then the woman faces the coffee machine. A few breaths later, Ruby sets a hot mug in front of Emma and then winks before she heads for the kitchen.

“Does your mother know you flirt with her best friend so brazenly?”

Emma whips her head to meet Regina’s gaze with wide eyes. “I wasn’t flirting. That- I don’t flirt with Ruby.”

Regina laughs. “Maybe you didn’t think you were flirting, but she was definitely flirting with you.”

Emma stutters a bit and then quickly says, “Doesn’t matter. We’re here to talk about the problem coming to town and the two that are already here.”

Regina’s still smiling like she’s laughing but the older woman doesn’t make a sound. The amusement shines brightly in her deep, brown eyes all the same.

Emma watches it dim seconds later when she goes on to ask, “So? Why does this Mendel guy think you had something to do with his dad’s disappearance?”

Regina immediately tenses up. Her shoulders, her jaw, even her hands as she clasps her mug more firmly. “You think I had something to do with it?”

“Come on, Regina,” Emma exhales. “1983. Same year I was born. First year of the curse.”

“That doesn’t mean I had anything to do with it,” Regina argues.

“Maybe not, but you at least know more than you’re letting on.” She watches Regina actively avoid her gaze, so she licks her lips and pushes. “It’s fine if you want to keep secrets from our federal guests, but you and I can’t have those. The last time you kept me in the dark, we almost lost Henry.”

If Emma wasn’t looking for the brunette’s reaction, she would have missed the movement of Regina’s throat as the other woman gulped.

“That’s not technically true,” Regina quietly tries to defend herself, but the mayor’s voice is rough from tamping down emotions she, evidently, doesn’t want to reveal.

Emma wouldn’t have believed that even if Regina had been convincing, but the woman doesn’t even believe herself. And, as far as Emma knows, that’s a first. “Look,” she gently starts to say, “I’m not asking this to trick you or pass judgement. I just want to know all the facts so we’re not surprised by anything else.”

“You don’t trust me,” Regina flatly states.

Emma closes her eyes for a few seconds and then, “Can you really blame me? Maybe I don’t trust you, but I know you wouldn’t ruin your chance to fix things with Henry. I trust that. So? What do you know about Mendel?”

“Nothing,” Regina snaps. Thankfully for them, she’s not loud enough to draw any attention.

Well, except Ruby. The waitress reappears with Emma’s food just then and looks at Regina before she silently checks in with the sheriff.

“Thanks, Ruby,” Emma says more firmly and curtly than is probably necessary, but it gets the point across and in record time.

Ruby raises her hands in surrender and backs away. Emma and Regina are alone again in the blink of an eye.

“What happened, Regina?” She speaks softly, so softly she’s almost whispering.

Regina answers with a small shake of her head and a quieter, calmer, “Nothing.”

The older woman barely gets out the response when their friends in suits appear in the doorway between the inn and the diner. Mulder’s still fixing his tie as they step more noticeably into view while Scully appears to scan her surroundings with slightly wide-eyed uncertainty.

Immediately, the air in the room shifts. Everything feels stifling, suffocating, and Regina clams up. Naturally. 

Emma’s about to press the brunette on the issue in spite of the woman’s obvious signs of tension when the agents lock eyes with them and cautiously start to approach. 

Regina tenses again and focuses on her plate while Emma watches the agents close the distance between them. 

All eyes in the diner turn to Mulder and Scully while they approach the counter. When Mulder notices the extra attention, he dance-walks the rest of the way to Emma and Regina and gives the other patrons glances of acknowledgement. His expression of slightly pouty lips and a youthful kind of feigned innocence makes him look like a twelve year old, though. It oddly reminds Emma of Henry, which isn’t really a good thing for a grown man. With government connections, no less. 

“Good morning, ladies,” he greets as he places a hand on the edge of the counter before sliding into a stool one over from Regina. 

Scully takes the one next to him, which doesn’t leave her much room to see Emma and Regina unobstructed. She also appears more wary of the interaction, seemingly following Mulder’s lead just to keep him out of trouble. 

“What’s good here?” He tries to charm them with a boyish smile—at least, that’s how it comes off—and Emma’s body goes rigid from head to toe. 

“Is that really what you want to ask,” Emma states more than asks.

 “Whoa, easy there, Sheriff. I don’t mean any harm.” 

“Right. Look, I don’t really mean to be rude, but I don’t appreciate people trying to _disarm_ me for their benefit just before they swoop down and sink their talons in.” 

“You have a lot of experience with that?” 

“Is your investigation about me or trying to find Greg Mendel,” Emma fires back. 

Mulder raises his hands in surrender. “Maybe that was inappropriate,” he confesses. 

“What’s inappropriate is fueling the fire to a crazy man’s conspiracy theories and then almost forgetting to mention it while poking your nose in our business,” Emma grouchily replies. 

“Hopefully you’ll forgive me, Sheriff,” Mulder calmly says. “It’s just… I did a little research last night and it seems there really aren’t any records on this town or its inhabitants. Not even a mayor who’s apparently been governing since at least 1983 but doesn’t look a day over thirty.” 

Regina chuckles with a thin smile that Emma can’t even say is fake polite or mayoral in any way. It’s definitely queenly with sharp teeth thinly veiled behind red lips. “I never said I’d been mayor that long, and looks can be deceiving. Maybe I don’t _look_ a day over thirty. Doesn’t mean that I’m not.” 

“Are you?” 

“As I’m sure your partner can tell you, it’s rude to ask a woman her age,” Regina easily responds, never once dropping her smile. 

Mulder smiles back at her, seemingly charmed and amused. 

Then, Agent Scully chimes in with a deep breath and a much more delicate approach. “Are there any files on the town we might be able to look at, Mayor Mills?” 

“No, actually. A lot of them were destroyed in a fire at Town Hall last year,” Regina replies with a glance at Emma. 

“Convenient,” Mulder says, and his tone conveys how little he believes her. 

“That we do have a file on,” Emma offers. “It happened the night before the sheriff’s election. It was the first paperwork I filed after my promotion.” 

“Made the front page of our newspaper if you need more proof than that,” Granny says as she suddenly appears behind the counter. She throws a glare Agent Mulder’s way before setting down a coffee for Regina that would have been surprisingly kind post-curse. If it hadn’t been served to go. 

Mulder’s smile brightens in an almost teasing way as far as Emma can tell. “Any chance you’ll point me in the direction of those archives?” 

“You might try the library,” Granny answers with a hand on her hip and an exasperated expression. Then, she grumbles the phrase “hot shot” like an insult and walks back into the kitchen. 

“Mulder,” Agent Scully says quietly. “If you insist on pushing so hard, could you wait until I get my coffee?” 

Emma smirks and continues to eat her breakfast a little more resolutely than when she’d tried to get information from Regina. 

“You should do your partner a favor,” Regina suggests with a grin before sliding off her stool. “Nice talk, Sheriff.” 

“Whoa, wait, _Regina_.” Emma spins around and grazes the brunette’s bicep instead of just grabbing it. “That ‘nice talk’ isn’t over.” 

Regina leans in closer, close enough that Emma doubts the agents will hear the older woman over the gradually forming morning rush, and almost purrs, “Come find me and maybe we’ll continue this somewhere more private.” 

Shivers run down Emma’s spine and arms and leave goosebumps in their wake. She looks dangerously close to Regina’s mouth and licks her lips before Regina breaks the moment as effortlessly as she’d started it. 

Regina steps away, toward the door, and excuses herself with an amused “Sheriff” tossed over her shoulder. The woman then struts off in her high heels, stocking-covered calves that Emma can still see are just a little defined in part thanks to the footwear, and then her gaze settles on Regina’s ass until the mayor disappears from sight. 

That’s also when Mulder clears his throat and regains Emma’s attention. She spins back around and all but ignores the agents in favor of her food. 

“She’s great,” Mulder sarcastically says, though not without yet another smile, and then adds, “your partner.” 

“My what? No.” Emma nervously chuckles and shakes her head. “We’re not- No.” 

She sees Mulder and Scully share a look, although Mulder’s looks more disbelieving than Scully’s because _his_ partner doesn’t draw any quick conclusions. 

“Oh. Sorry. Your...ex?” 

“We’ve never- She’s just my boss. And a pain in my ass. And…” Realization dawns on Emma then and she finishes with, “The mother of my kid. Right. But we’re not… And we’ve never been- It’s complicated.” 

Mulder nods and flashes another amused smile that makes Emma want to trip him just so the agent has one less thing to entertain him for the day. 

“Anyway, you want information on the town? Take Granny’s advice and check out the library,” Emma says as she lifts her plate and mug off the counter. “It’s under the clock tower in the middle of town. Can’t miss it.” She gives them a transparently fake smile and takes her food to a table at the window. The distance and the view provide some peace and distraction, but she thankfully doesn’t need them because she looks up after a moment to see the agents more focused on trying to order their own food. 

She silently laughs as she scarfs down the rest of her breakfast while watching Granny glare at the agents from behind the service window in back as Ruby busies herself with a few other things. Other things that unfortunately attract Agent Mulder’s attention to her short, bright red shorts. 

“Men,” Emma grumbles into her next bite. When she swallows, she sees Scully backhand Mulder’s chest with a disgusted expression. Mulder rubs at his chest like he’s hurt, but he’s also chuckling. It makes Emma think what a shame it is he doesn’t know what he’s missing by not going toe-to-toe with such a magnificent force, which reminds her of her last fight with Regina. Those thoughts encourage her to eat faster so she can get back to the other woman, and then she’s running after the mayor in no time. As usual.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From this chapter on, I didn't get my beta reader's approval, so any mistakes you might find are mine and I hope there aren't too many of them. I did have a fresh pair of eyes look over the rest of the story after I did my own proof reading, but I still hold myself responsible for any potential errors throughout the rest of the story.

Emma’s met with familiar and loud tension at the mayor’s office. The difference is that she’s not in the middle of it until she walks through the door and sees Mary Margaret and Regina at each other’s throats. Well, almost. Thankfully, their sparring is limited to yelling and not too closely invading each other’s personal space.

“Do you really think anyone would elect you anyway,” Mary Margaret asks, sounding higher pitched than usual and kind of crazed.

“We aren’t talking about an election,” Regina growls. “We’re talking about me resuming work and keeping you all from burning Storybrooke to the ground.”

“Interesting you’d say that since you’re the one who can throw fireballs. This situation wouldn’t even be the first time in recent history you’ve played with fire either.”

Suddenly, Regina hurls one of the tumblers from the drink cart in Emma’s direction and the blonde just barely dodges it before the glass can hit her. It shatters against the still open office door and litters the floor just inside the threshold.

“Really mature, Regina,” Mary Margaret sarcastically responds. “If it wasn’t enough that no one in town trusts you, that tantrum just proves you’re not stable enough to keep the power you gave yourself all those years ago.”

“Or maybe you’re pushing too hard,” Emma says by way of announcing herself while she slowly stands back up. She looks over her shoulder and takes note that the thrown glass had been empty upon impact.

“Emma,” Mary Margaret greets with surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to finish a talk with Regina,” is her honest answer. “But that’s less likely to happen if she’s in a mood.”

Regina scoffs.

Emma looks at her pointedly and adds, “And throwing things at my head.” She stands a little more confidently then as she cocks a hip and rests a hand on it. Her fingers brush over her badge and it makes her feel comfortable for the first time since the curse broke, like she has a bit of normalcy back.

Regina’s lips curl into a familiar smirk and brown eyes spark with challenge.

Mary Margaret sighs loudly from in front of Regina’s desk and diverts their attention. “Well, I’m sure that discussion can be had anywhere.”

“But there’s guaranteed privacy here,” Emma mentions. “In _Regina’s_ office.”

“As of today, it’s _not_ her office,” Mary Margaret replies.

“Over my dead body.” Regina advances on the school teacher.

Emma rushes between them and holds a hand out to keep Regina back. The brunette pulls away when she sees Emma’s hand and avoids contact altogether. Emma mutters, “Really?” Then, she turns to Mary Margaret and drops her hand. “Are you forcibly removing her from office? _Now_? With those FBI agents hanging around? No. Stage a coup some other time.”

“Your father and I are doing what’s best for the town,” Mary Margaret argues. “She cursed every single one of her constituents. But…honestly, we’re doing her a favor.”

Emma’s back feels like it’s on fire when Regina growls, “A favor?” Emma looks at the brunette and realizes she’s not actually on fire, but the heat source at her back is a fireball crackling in Regina’s palm.

“Whoa. Regina, stop,” Emma begs more than she enforces.

Regina eyes cut to her after a couple seconds and, once they’re looking at each other, the brunette takes a deep breath and closes her fist around the fireball. It’s immediately extinguished.

“Well, _obviously_ you’ve convinced me you can lead this town with _that_ little display,” Mary Margaret says with an ugly smile plastered on her face. In that moment, Emma doesn’t see any resemblance to her roommate and sees only Princess Snow. Or, at least, what she assumes Snow was like before her bandit days.

Regina lunges for Mary Margaret again and Emma grunts as she uses herself as a shield to protect Mary Margaret from the older woman’s wrath. Again.

“Okay,” Emma says more to herself before she gently pushes Regina away and takes a step toward the woman. “Regina? Why don’t we go for a walk? Take a breath, finish our discussion.”

“If it’s about those agents,” Mary Margaret interrupts, “I think that’s a conversation better had with your father and I.”

“Actually, it’s really not,” Emma says. When she looks back at Mary Margaret, she sees a frown and hint of confusion. “I don’t want to get into this right now. Have fun with your little takeover.”

“She is _not_ taking over,” Regina insists before addressing Mary Margaret specifically. “We’re not done here.”

Emma leads Regina out of the office by the arm, which Regina yanks out of her grip once they’re in the hall.

“If you think your family is going to run _my_ town,” Regina starts to say.

“Honestly, I don’t like it any more than you do,” Emma quickly confesses.

“Really?” Regina’s voice comes out in a tone between skepticism and just a little bit of hope.

“Yeah. I’m just full of surprises,” Emma mutters. “So, where are we going?”

“We?”

“Yeah, I was serious when I said we needed to finish our talk.”

“I told you I didn’t do anything.”

“You were lying.”

Regina sighs.

“Come on, Regina. The least that guy has on you is that you look the same as you did when he met you almost thirty years ago.”

“You were also right about my office providing privacy for this conversation.”

“Well, your house would also allow for that and it’s not like you have anywhere else to go if you don’t have work.”

“Whose fault is that?”

Emma loudly sighs then and her body sags with the weight of it. She stops just outside Town Hall and touches Regina’s arm to stop her as well.

Regina complies and turns to face her.

“We have to deal with this,” Emma reminds her. “The agents and that Mendel guy aren’t going away just because you want to avoid talking about whatever happened back then.”

“I know.”

Emma nods. “I know you know. Your place?”

Regina maintains eye contact in silence for another moment and then fleetingly looks down between them before nodding her agreement.

They drive separately to the mansion and Emma mindlessly parks beside the Mercedes in the driveway, which earns her that infamous Mills glare from the older woman. She’s still allowed inside the house and doesn’t have to move the Bug as a stipulation to gain entry. Regina doesn’t even demand it of her as they make their way into the study or even after she’s poured them both a glass of her potent apple cider and settles on the chair across from the couch.

Emma places hers on the table without taking a sip and sits forward on the couch with her elbows on her knees. Their seating arrangement reminds her of her first night in town and she’s comforted by that as well, if only for a moment.

“So. Mendel. What can you tell me about him?”

“Nothing, Miss Swan. I don’t recognize the man in the photo those agents showed us, and I’ve never heard the name Greg Mendel before now.”

“Are you serious? Quit jerking me around, Regina. You _know_ him. How many kids came here with their dad when the curse created this place out of thin air?”

“I knew of a father and son who stopped in,” Regina casually admits. “They were friendly. I was surprised, which wasn’t a pleasant feeling at first. The father was sweet. The boy was…honest.”

“Honest.”

“Yes. He didn’t like my lasagna and he told me it wasn’t good. I hadn’t done any of my own cooking before then, so it was understandable. I spent years perfecting the recipe I use now, among other meals. And that was it.”

“Really,” Emma states with audible disbelief.

“I didn’t see either of them after a few days. They left.”

“Without saying goodbye? They came to your house for lasagna one night, but they didn’t let you know they were leaving?”

“I’m sure the father mentioned it. I don’t think they’d intended to stay in the area for long. I don’t think they were from around here.”

“Of course they weren’t. Storybrooke is basically a fictional town.”

“I meant,” Regina starts to correct her in an agitated tone, “they weren’t from a nearby town. I’m not sure how far they’d traveled, but they ended up passing through my town when they came across it.”

“That’s it? They just…happened by the town and wandered in?”

“Do you really think this town was created with a barrier around it?”

“So, _you_ put one up. _After_ they’d been here.” Again, they’re questions Emma states because she already knows the answer. One Regina tries to deny.

“You know I didn’t have magic until after the curse broke.”

“Then how the hell were you able to bake a sleeping curse into that apple turnover?” That time, she does ask. She also slides toward the very edge of the couch and glares challengingly at the brunette.

Regina stares her down easily and a flicker of a smirk appears like it did when Emma had sawed off a branch of the woman’s apple tree.

Emma shakes her head, grabs her drink from the table and downs it like a shot before she sets it back down and stands up. Regina doesn’t move an inch, just follows Emma with her eyes. “One way or another, I’m gonna figure it out. You better hope I’m still on your side when I do.”

Regina’s laugh sends tingles down her spine before the older woman replies, “You’re not on my side. You never will be. The only reason you’re fighting your mother on anything she says or does is because you have unresolved issues with her. I assume you also have issues with your father, but he’s not the one who keeps _pushing_ , as you said back at the office.”

“You’re infuriating,” Emma says as she stops next to a corner of the table that separated them before she got off the couch.

“I told you what I know.”

“A lot of good that does us,” Emma responds. She takes a step closer to Regina and then leans over. “With what you just told me, it sounds like you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Regina doesn’t even flinch. Her eyes continue to bore into Emma, even when the blonde turns away with a scoff and sees herself out.

* * *

Emma tugs her hair into a quick ponytail as she jogs down the steep and narrow loft stairs the next morning. Another series of knocks at the door propels Emma across the living room in record time after a stumble off the last two steps and she calls out, “Coming!”

The brief exchange is loud enough to rouse Mary Margaret, who pops her sleepy head out from behind the curtain that separates her bedroom from the rest of the apartment and squints unhappily at her.

“Sorry,” Emma says a little quieter and with an equally apologetic wince as she reaches the door. When she pulls it open a few seconds later, she comes face to face with Regina. “Hey. Thanks for coming.”

Emma’s surprised to see Regina look her over from head to toe, taking in the partially transparent blue V-neck sweater and black skinny jeans. She almost shows her surprise with raised eyebrows, but she relaxes her features to maintain a neutral expression.

“No need to thank me for taking my son to the bus stop,” comes Regina’s snippy reply before she picks invisible lint off her coat.

“What?” Mary Margaret shuffles past the curtain and groggily asks the question while rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “I can take Henry to school with me. We’re both going to the same place. You didn’t need to call her.”

Regina scoffs and Emma sees the brunette open her mouth wide to lay into Mary Margaret. The blonde immediately intervenes.

“She’s still his mom,” Emma argues. “She won’t hurt him.”

“Maybe not intentionally,” Mary Margaret grumbles as she crosses her arms over her chest.

“Look, I got a weird call from Archie about those agents and need to get out to the woods as soon as possible. Regina’s available and dressed for the day, probably already had her coffee, too. Besides, I thought you and David made a big thing about Regina not being mayor anymore, so shouldn’t someone really be handling that?”

She watches Mary Margaret flap her mouth open and closed several times and never once say anything. It goes on just long enough to waste precious time before Emma shakes her head and presses on.

“My kid, my call,” she says in a no-nonsense tone and grabs her sheriff’s department jacket from the coat rack.

Regina’s smirking triumphantly at Mary Margaret when Emma looks at her again and it sparks an eye roll from the blonde.

“I don’t mean to overstep,” Mary Margaret tries again.

“So don’t,” Emma insists a little forcefully through gritted teeth while she roughly tugs the jacket onto herself.

Mary Margaret does it anyway. “The last thing you should be doing right now is making such a reckless decision.”

“Reckless? She’s dropping him at the bus stop in a town that only has, what, three blocks?”

“That’s not the issue. The issue is that she’s the Evil—”

“Stop. If I have to hear that excuse one more time…” she leaves the sentence unfinished and flicks her ponytail out from under the jacket collar. “And you can’t talk like that in public.”

“We’re not in public,” Mary Margaret says, half-affronted and half-confused.

“It’ll be easier to avoid slip ups if you just stop talking about anything fairy tale related altogether. So, put your grievances aside for the time being and do this my way.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Noted,” Emma gruffly replies before she walks back to the stairs. She yells up to the loft, “Henry, let’s go!”

“When your father hears about this,” Mary Margaret starts to scold, but Emma stops her again.

She sighs before she tells the pixie haired woman, “I’d love to see you try discipling me at my age. You also need to cool it with the parental...everything. Don’t refer to yourselves as my parents or me as your daughter and don’t try to baby me. That last one isn’t just because of the two FBI agents either.”

“Mary Margaret? What’s going on,” David sleepily asks as he slips past the curtain with tired and barely open eyes wearing only a tank top and boxers.

Before Emma can object to seeing David in such a state of undress now knowing he’s her father, Henry thunders down the stairs and hops off the last two to land with a heavy thud. She smiles at him and ruffles his hair, which makes him scrunch up his face and groan in protest. He swats her hand away as well, but she’s already pulling back and smiling even brighter.

And then Henry sees Regina. He doesn’t scowl, but he’s not ecstatic either.

“Regina’s gonna take you to the bus,” Emma tells him. “I have to deal with some work stuff, okay?”

“Regina’s doing what now?” David seems to immediately wake up when he hears that. He opens his eyes wide like he’s been awake for hours and glares at Regina before he looks at Emma like she’s crazy for agreeing to those plans.

“I really don’t want to have this conversation again, so let me stop you both right there. I called Regina, I asked her to take him. This was my idea, not hers.”

David rubs a hand over his face and places the other on his hip.

“I’ll pick you up after school,” Emma tells Henry. “Okay?”

He nods and slides his backpack on before heading for the door. Emma follows him and Regina as the brunette rests a hand on his shoulder for the first few steps they take away from the Charmings.

“Emma,” Mary Margaret calls out and stops her with a gentle hand on her elbow just as Regina and Henry reach the door. “I don’t like this.”

Henry looks over his shoulder and narrows his focus to their conversation.

Emma clenches her jaw. “You’ve made your opinion very clear,” she growls, keeping her voice low enough in the hopes that Henry won’t hear her. But it’s a small apartment and no one’s moving or speaking except for the two of them, so she’s not holding her breath. “Second chances, remember? She gives me a reason to doubt her and it’s done, but until then we should be a united front.”

She turns away from her parents without a response and doesn’t hear one on her unrushed way out either.

Regina and Henry walk with her only as far as to where the Bug’s parked along the curb outside. Henry’s quiet the entire way and looks at his shoes more than anywhere else. Regina seems about the same, but she hides it better. Not well enough to fool Emma, but she assumes the mask is more for Henry’s sake anyway.

“I’ll see you later, Kid,” she tells him before kissing the top of his head. She looks over him to lock eyes with Regina who’s already looking at her. The brunette’s expression mirrors the way Emma feels. Wide-eyed, unsure, and then a determination sets in both their eyes.

Regina gives a slight nod of camaraderie and Emma purses her lips before averting her eyes for a moment. When she looks up again, Regina’s attention is on Henry as he moves past her in the direction of the bus stop. Seconds later, brown eyes flick up to Emma and Emma nods her silent agreement.

“We’ll talk later,” Emma says. “Uh, call me if anything happens.”

“With Henry?”

“Well, yeah, but I meant if anyone gives you a hard time. The agents, the townspeople. If there’s any trouble, let me know. Okay?”

“Why? Are you my body guard now, Miss Swan?” Regina quirks a brow and there’s no shortage of amusement in her voice.

Emma rolls her eyes and says, “Just call me.”

Regina looks her over once, assesses her, and the amusement fades. She’s serious again when she concedes, “If it comes to that.”


	4. Chapter 4

Emma pulls onto the shoulder and sees the agents before anyone else. They’re hovering near something just at the edge of the woods, hidden by brush and a wagging tail. She’s halfway out of the Bug—the cruiser still at the station—when Pongo steps into view and tries to walk toward her. Archie gently tugs on the leash and prevents the Dalmatian from moving more than a few feet before Pongo’s circling, sniffing around and whimpering. The town’s favorite pet also tries to paw at whatever’s on the ground and most likely the reason anyone called Emma out to the patch of woods not too far from the docks.

She stops behind Mulder for a moment since he doesn’t seem interested in moving out of her way and then steps around him as she asks, “What’s goin’ on here?”

It doesn’t take longer than a few seconds for her to answer her own question. A familiar, long haired brunette lays curled up on the ground with nothing but her partially tattered red cloak draped over her.

“Oh, god,” Emma mutters, but she knows she’s heard in the quiet morning with only the soft pitter-patter of raindrops on tree leaves and a lack of conversation from the small group surrounding Ruby.

“She still has a pulse,” Scully assures, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“We just don’t know how she got here,” Mulder adds. “Any thoughts, Sheriff?”

Emma knows what the cloak’s meant to do, and if Ruby’s out sleeping off the first primal exercise the waitress has had in almost thirty years then she needs to come up with a quick and believable lie.

“I don’t like to jump to conclusions,” Emma replies while she crouches down and pushes long tresses out of Ruby’s face. She spots the scratches on the woman’s neck and, suddenly, sirens cut through the peacefulness in an otherwise disturbing situation.

She looks up just as an ambulance pulls up and parks diagonally in front of her car. Two EMTs hop out and one goes to open the back doors while the driver jogs toward the growing crowd.

“How is she?” The female EMT with short and naturally thick and curly hair asks as she checks Ruby’s vitals for herself.

“She doesn’t seem distressed,” Emma explains, and then looks up at Archie before conferring with the agents for her next question. “You found her like this?”

“Technically, the town psychologist did,” Mulder supplies. “But we were doing a quick sweep of the area in case Mr. Mendel found his way here overnight when we stumbled on the scene.”

Emma turns her attention to the EMT in time to see the other woman nod as she files away the information and throws the stethoscope back around her neck. “Ruby? Ruby, wake up.”

It takes a few tries and some gentle shaking before the brunette finally stirs. Groggy and with a furrowed brow, Ruby sits up and the cloak falls to her waist. Everyone makes a noise of either protest or shock and Emma immediately warns her friend, “You’re flashing some people.”

Ruby’s touching her head like it’s sore and she’s slower to react than usual. Only when a breeze makes her shiver does the brunette look down and realize her breasts are on display. The lanky woman gasps and clutches the singular garment to her chest. “What the hell?”

“Ruby,” Emma calmly tries to grab her attention.

The waitress looks up and around at the faces staring down at her. Her eyes widen when they land on the agents, but she appears to relax a little when she sees Emma.

“Do you remember how you got here?” Emma doesn’t waste time. She also flicks her eyes in the direction of the agents to remind Ruby that, if the brunette does remember, she needs to watch how she answers.

Ruby glances at Mulder and Scully again and then locks eyes with Emma when she responds, “No, actually. I guess I must have gone out for a run.”

The wolf isn’t subtle with the way she stresses run, but she also doesn’t elaborate. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help them.

“You went for a run in the dark?” Scully’s the one to ask the question and the redhead looks as skeptical as she sounds. One eyebrow is arched. She stares at Ruby either like she can see right through the waitress or like she’s convinced Greg Mendel isn’t the only mentally unstable person she’s encountered.

“It’s a small town,” Ruby shrugs. “Most people don’t have a reason to lock their doors at night.”

Scully looks from Ruby to Mulder and the agents look even less convinced than ever.

“Um, Emma? Is it possible I can get back to the diner? Granny’s already going to skin me alive when she realizes…” Ruby hesitates as she seems to struggle with what to say next and then takes in her nudity with a little more awareness. She looks sheepish for a recently reawakened wolf when she meets Emma’s eyes again and adds, “I’d also really like to put some clothes on.”

Emma nods and tries not to laugh, because it’s not exactly funny when Ruby can’t tell her what happened after they’d parted ways the previous night. Emma’s lie detector hadn’t pinged at all when Ruby had said she didn’t know how she’d found herself in the dirt miles away from her home, which worried the blonde. Especially with the possibility of Mendel lurking around town.

“You’ve been out here a while,” Emma reminds her. “You need to get checked out, make sure you weren’t too exposed to the elements or...or anything.”

“You’ll have the hospital run a sexual assault kit?” Scully looks as determined as she does hopeful when she directs the question at Emma.

“We’ll take care of her,” Emma assures, but it’s apparently not enough for the other woman.

“It just seems as though everyone’s unnaturally calm when none of you can even explain what happened to this woman,” Scully replies.

“We’ll take care of her,” Emma insists this time before she offers a hand to Ruby.

Ruby’s on her feet in seconds and wraps the cloak more firmly around herself. Her nose is a little pink, so Emma moves closer and wraps an arm around the other woman.

She rubs her friend’s arm a couple times as she starts to maneuver Ruby toward the ambulance and then keeps her hand on Ruby’s bicep even after they walk past the agents. Beyond that, she lets the EMTs do their job and walks back to the group. She doesn’t want to give Scully or Mulder any other reasons to dig deeper into her or the town, but Emma ignores them when she’s back in dew-covered flora.

“Do you need a statement from me, Emma?”

She weakly smiles at Archie, polite and appreciative, and answers, “Whatever you can tell me would be great. You can do that here or at the station.”

Archie glances at the agents’ shoes, seemingly unwilling to make eye contact with either of them, before he says, “I think it’s best for Pongo if we head inside.”

Emma hides it, but her lips try to curl into a proud grin. Nice, friendly Archie is much better at providing bogus excuses than Emma had known.

Scully looks like she wants to say something, gives Emma a sort of judge-y expression without actually appearing judgmental somehow, but neither her nor her partner voice their opinions or concerns.

“Well, thank you for waiting with Ruby,” Emma courteously tells them. “I’m sure we’ll run into each other later. Good luck with the rest of the sweep.”

Archie flashes them a brief and tight smile as he guides Pongo toward the Bug with Emma not far behind and not nearly as inclusive.

The blonde acknowledges them by looking at them one last time before she makes her way back to her car, but that’s it. She folds the passenger seat forward for Pongo who leaps into the backseat, and then she and Archie settle in for the quick drive to the station.

Archie doesn’t wait to reach the station before he asks, “W-who exactly are they?” In fact, they’re only stopped at the first stop sign not even a full mile from where he, and the agents, had found Ruby.

“They’re from—”

“That much I understood when they introduced themselves yesterday. I confirmed it with my own eyes when they showed me their badges, too.”

“Then you also know why they’re here,” Emma infers.

“I know what they’ve told me,” Archie stresses like Emma’s supposed to be able to read between the lines. Emma stares at him until he amends, “What they say and what they mean, as it can with anyone, mean different things.”

“Okay. So, what does your fake psychology degree tell you they’re here for?”

For a moment, Archie doesn’t say anything. Emma doesn’t spare him a glance, but the silence feels specific to her wording. Whatever offense the shrink might have taken, he moves past it and replies, “I don’t think even they know. The woman, Agent Scully, seems more concerned with the escaped patient while Agent Mulder—”

“Is far more interested in what we’re hiding from him,” Emma states.

“Precisely. But he doesn’t know what that means yet, what he’s actually looking for. He just...believes there’s more here than what he’s presented with.”

“He’s not wrong.”

“No, he’s not. What does Regina have to say about this?”

“Not much. Just that she disagrees with me, of course, about having a town meeting to warn the others about them.”

“You think we could even hold a meeting without the agents finding out about it and attending?”

“You sound just like her,” Emma tells him with a shake of her head. She’d be amused if she didn’t already feel like she’s been talking in circles. And it’s only been twenty-four hours since Mulder and Scully’s arrival. “Guess when you see inside someone’s head…”

“That’s not what…” Archie sighs and abandons whatever he’d initially wanted to say. Instead, he gives his statement. “On my walk with Pongo, I thought I saw something, but wasn’t sure. The closer we got, I recognized the hood. By then, I’d also realized that wasn’t the only thing on the ground.”

“She was unconscious when you found her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see anything troubling about her appearance? Blood or scratches? A weapon nearby maybe?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. But...the cloak wasn’t exactly...on top of her the way you saw it.”

Emma almost crashes when she whips her head to stare at him with wide eyes and a slack jaw. “What, was it just balled up beside her?”

“Sort of. I-it covered more of her ankles than anything else, but it really didn’t cover much of anything. It- It looked a little like an afterthought.”

“Just haphazardly thrown to the ground?”

“Yes. I-I’m not sure how accurate that is since it’s just one person’s unqualified interpretation, but—”

“That’s good enough for me,” Emma cuts off his rambling before Archie spirals into an unnecessary panic. “So, it’s possible Ruby shifted back and that’s just where the hood fell, or someone else was out there with her.”

“I thought she was the only shifter brought over from the Enchanted Forest,” Archie says.

“I never said it had to be another wolf out here with her.”

“But who else would have been out here during Wolf’s Time if not someone else like her?”

“That’s what I need to figure out,” Emma says more to herself just as she pulls in beside the cruiser. She parks before she turns to Archie and asks, “Were you the one to find Ruby?”

“Yes. No one else was there when I noticed it was her.”

“How long after you stopped did you notice the agents?”

“I draped the cloak over Ruby and checked her pulse. I was about to call you when one of them, I think it was Agent Scully, asked me what was going on.”

“And they approached, took in the scene, then you called me?”

“Yes. Agent Mulder asked if I had anything to do with why she was like that and when I told them I’d just found her there, Agent Scully asked if I’d called anyone or tried to wake her. I started dialing before I finished telling her I had been about to call you.”

“Okay. They were close enough that it’s possible they were involved, but I doubt it. Unless they’re playing dumb, they have no idea what Ruby can do.” Dread floods her system just then as she realizes, “Or what she could have done last night.”

Archie’s eyes widen a little fearfully, but he shakes his head and protests, “You don’t think she—”

“She might not have meant it, but she’s been cursed for a long time and the hood was kind of shredded. That’s supposed to keep her from shifting for a reason, right?”

“She wouldn’t,” Archie says with conviction.

“Unfortunately, I can’t rule that out just yet.”

And she’s no closer to ruling it out a couple hours later when things take a terrible turn.

It’s not even noon before the station receives a frantic call from a diner employee about a bloody dumpster. That’s all Emma understands before the guy hangs up, but it’s just enough to make her tense and dread what’s waiting for her.

“It’s Billy! Billy’s in the dumpster!”

It’s so much worse than she expects.

She wants to make a joke about the waiter, presumably the same person who’d called the station, shouting lines that might as well have come from Lassie, but the amount of blood that coats the dumpster inside and out isn’t a laughing matter at all. Just like Ruby’s situation wasn’t either. Beyond that, Billy the mechanic lays inside it. She can’t tell what all has happened to him, but it doesn’t look good from where she stands over the dumpster on top of a discarded produce crate.

He’s twisted up and curled in on himself, and Emma thinks he might be laying on one of his arms at an uncomfortable angle. If he can even feel uncomfortable at all.

Emma’s seen a lot of things in the system, on the streets and in the land that shall not be mentioned while the FBI agents are in town, but she’s never had to pull a body out of a dumpster. She’s never investigated crimes either. Bounty hunting involves live criminals, not dead innocents.

A sputtered gasp and subsequent cough startles her just as she finishes that thought.

“Holy shit!” She scrambles off the crate and nearly sprains her ankle in the process while she whips out her cell and calls Storybrooke General. “I need an ambulance at the diner! We’ve got a severely injured male in his, uh, I don’t know, 20s? He’s lost a lot of blood. And he’s in a hard to reach location, so if you could bring a crane or whatever- What? No. This isn’t a joke. Look, I don’t know what the hell you’d use to get this guy out, but he’s bleeding out in a dumpster and barely breathing. Oh, and by the way, this is Sheriff Swan.” She almost hangs up on the receptionist before she hears what she needs to hear. An ambulance is on its way. Thankfully, she keeps it together long enough to gather that information and relays it to the shaking waiter.

His light brown curls bounce when he hastily nods his understanding, but his wide and frightened eyes don’t convey the same message. The guy looks like he’s seconds away from passing out, pale and jittery, and his breathing is harsh and shallow. She decides it’s a panic attack and grabs the crate she’d used to look in on Billy.

She slides it over to where the waiter stands next to the back door to the diner’s kitchen and stands it up to be taller than it is wide. “Sit down,” she instructs as calmly as possible. If it comes out more like a command, so be it. She hears sirens in the distance getting louder and looks down the alley to the side street where she thinks, hopes, assumes the EMTs will pass by on their way to the front. If not, “I need you to go to the front of the diner in case the ambulance doesn’t come through this way,” Emma tells the waiter. “Think you can do that?”

He takes a few sobbing breaths and replies, “Yeah?”

“You don’t sound sure. _Can_ you do that?”

He looks at her with watery eyes then and sniffles. “Yes,” he breathes out with much more confidence than she’s sure he feels. The point is, he’s not in such a state of shock any more that he can fake it until he makes it and that’s good enough.

“Great. Lead them back here if they’re out front, okay?”

She catches his lips mouth “okay,” but she can’t tell if he actually speaks the word. She does see him nod again, however, and accepts that as his agreement.

A moment later, the waiter stands up on wobbly legs and yanks open the back door. He sprints through the diner like his life depends on it. Emma thinks that might have more to do with him wanting to be anywhere else but the crime scene than it does his willingness to get help for a fellow townsperson. The important thing is that the ambulance sounds like it’s reached their block, but that poses a problem just as much as it’s a relief because the alley is a crime scene and the EMTs won’t care how they affect it as they try to save a man’s life.

Emma opens her camera app and snaps a few pictures of the dumpster from a street view. She then grabs the crate, hits the record button and steadily walks around the dumpster for a three-sixty view before setting the crate down in front of the dumpster again. Still recording, she steps onto the wood and angles her phone down to capture Billy’s moderately mangled state. She stops the recording after a few seconds and takes pictures with and without flash as she apologizes to the man who, thankfully, groans either in response to his pain or to her crude and rushed evidence collection.

She doesn’t even notice the sirens have stopped until the back door bursts open and two responders jog out to her with a gurney.

“Has the victim said anything?” One of the responders who’d picked up Ruby earlier asks as she approaches the dumpster.

“No,” Emma answers as she steps off the crate again and steps aside for an easier extraction. “He groaned just a second ago but hasn’t done more than that and gasp for breath. Before the gasp, I didn’t even think he’d survived whatever happened.”

“Jesus,” the other first responder says when he looks over the edge of the dumpster. “Looks like a nasty assault. This guy must have made some enemies or something.”

Gurney unfolded, the male responder slings himself into the dumpster while the woman keeps both feet on the ground. They work together to pull Billy out as quickly and safely as possible, and it’s unpleasant to watch, probably worse to do and the absolute worst in Billy’s experience. Emma doesn’t know that firsthand, but there doesn’t appear to be a part of his body that isn’t slashed open when they lift him over the edge. The speed with which they get him up, out and onto the gurney leads to some jostling that Billy doesn’t vocally object, but he looks more like a ragdoll than a person at that moment. And apparently is unresponsive when they check his vitals after loading him into the ambulance.

And that, of course, doesn’t happen without the feds noticing.

Only one of the ambulance doors is shut before Mulder startles her by appearing with his partner in the open door.

“Someone else is hurt?” Scully surprisingly speaks up from just behind Mulder. She takes a step closer and sees the damage as they hook Billy up to the machines. Then, she snaps into action. “I’ll ride along.” The redhead leaves no room for argument as she climbs into the back with Emma and moves around the gurney and equipment like a pro.

Mulder tries to heave himself inside almost immediately after her, but she and Emma chastise him in unison.

“No!”

Scully throws up a hand as if to physically stop him while Emma just stares him down with eyes that either look menacing or panicked. They’re wide at any rate.

“It’s too crowded,” Scully explains.

“So, why did you get in?” Emma can’t stop herself. She blurts out the question as it comes to mind, but Scully still supplies an answer.

“I have a medical degree. I can help.” The answer’s a little snappish, but the other woman makes it clear they have more important things to worry about when she announces life or death information to the EMTs.

The agent has more questions when both ambulance doors are shut and they’re on the move, but her inquiries are focused more on the patient’s condition than an investigation. It’s the only good thing to happen so far today. Of course, it doesn’t last long.

After Billy’s wheeled into an operating room that Whale rushes nurses and other doctors alike to prep for the mechanic, Emma stands back and takes a breath. She’s left in the waiting room with Agent Scully, watches the double doors Billy’s pushed behind as they swing back and forth several times and then texts Regina about their latest problem. As she hits send, Scully appears beside her.

“Is it common to admit this many possible victims, victims of a crime no less, in one morning?” Scully’s right to ask, to be suspicious, but it doesn’t help Emma in the slightest.

“No, it’s not,” Emma answers honestly, but she sounds as on edge as she feels.

“How many emergency surgeries would you say happen around here? Or emergencies in general.”

“Not many, but it does happen. This might be a small, unlisted, quirky town, but we’re all human and things happen.”

“Then it stands to reason that two people found indisposed and just outright disposed of on the same morning might be connected.”

Emma tries and fails to come up with a response. An alert from her phone saves her the trouble a few embarrassing seconds later and the text from Regina that’s responsible for that gives her a reason to walk away from the conversation.

“Excuse me,” she apologizes. “I have to take care of this.” It’s not exactly a lie, but she also doesn’t need to rush out to have a face-to-face chat with Regina either. The text only says, _“Now, it seems, a mandatory town meeting is in order. Tonight. 6pm. Spread the word and try not to tip off the FBI while you do it.”_

Regina’s given her a task, but it doesn’t require immediate action. Not when she has six hours to tell a few people who will then tell a few more people who will tell their friends or family and then they’ll all hopefully show up.

In the meantime, Emma decides to take a detour. She swings by Granny’s and spots Mulder through the window. He’s seated at a table against the wall closer to the back hallway between the diner and the inn, but she doesn’t think there’s a better time to sneak around the agents. As far as Emma knows, Agent Scully didn’t follow her out of the hospital and Agent Mulder’s preoccupied with his food and people-watching. She ducks out of sight preemptively when she notices him look up from his copy of the paper and then heads around the side of the building to get to the inn’s street entrance.

She checks the guest log and thanks Granny for her excellent bookkeeping, even when Emma’s the only person in the last year that’s visited the seaside town and there’s no reason to be so meticulous, because the room numbers are listed next to their names. It’s not exactly accurate, though. The rooms are written in the boxes to the right of the ones specified for their names, but there’s a dash after the number scribbled along Mulder’s name. She’s not sure which room belongs to which agent, so she grabs the spare keys to both rooms. She finds out why Granny might have documented their room numbers a little less meticulously than she thought when she sneaks upstairs and starts an investigation of her own.

The number written by Mulder’s name turns out to be Agent Scully’s room, which is obvious from the skirts Emma finds inside and—better yet—the case notes she finds on an old school tape recorder dictated by the woman herself. It works in Emma’s favor that she’d decided to check the rooms in numerical order as they’d been written in the book because it’s Scully’s room she wants anyway. The redhead possesses the case files, probably to look through as she records her notes, and one of the folders contains everything Regina can’t and won’t tell her about the so far unseen threat that is Greg Mendel.

She spends maybe ten minutes in the room before she knows everything she needs to know about what the agents are thinking. Ten minutes and she’s almost hysterical after what she reads.


	5. Chapter 5

“This is a mess.” Her life, their current situation, and they don’t even have a plan.

“Calm down,” Regina chides with an eye roll.

“Did I say all that out loud?”

“God, your whole family really is useless. You’re so worried the FBI will figure us all out because magic exists, and the town remembers and embraces their roots—unlike a certain sheriff with the same roots—but you’re the one most likely to reveal the truth about everything.”

“This is bad, Regina. Really bad,” Emma explains. “They think Ruby was assaulted and that it’s possible Mendel’s involved. And Scully already thinks Ruby and Billy’s attacks are connected. Either they’re that much closer to figuring out Ruby might have wolfed out on Billy or they’re right and this _psycho_ you created is trying to send you a message!”

“Well, that’s just absurd,” Regina says flippantly. “What kind of message does attacking a mechanic send me? I hardly know the man in the hospital. If he’s worked on my car, the most I’ve done is pay him for his services and wished him a good day like I do any other proprietors.”

Any previous panic leaves Emma in a rush. She sighs and rests her hands on her hips when she tells the brunette, “I think you’re missing the point.”

“Whatever point you may have can be raised at the meeting, which I hope won’t just be between the two of us.”

Emma’s lost, and it shows according to Regina’s subsequent squint. Thankfully, Regina doesn’t question it.

“Have you told anyone about the meeting,” Regina asks. “Or did you just run here to avoid showing the FBI the same level of paranoia you express with me?”

“That feels like a trick question, but yes, Regina, I told people. If Ruby wasn’t one of the two people in the hospital, I could have just told her and let her spread it around town like she spreads—”

“Her legs?”

“Oh my god. No! Gossip, Regina. Like she spreads gossip. And are you really slut shaming right now?”

“Not at all. It’s not like _I’m_ a prude. I just thought I’d try to move this along. What did you come here for if not to run from your problems?”

“We need a real plan,” Emma answers. “I’d personally like to know what it is before we address the town.”

“It’s simple, and one we’ve already discussed. Everyone needs to rely on their cursed identities around our visitors. As for Greg Mendel, you—and I suppose your father—will start patrolling to make sure he doesn’t find his way here.”

“And if Agent Scully is right? What if he’s already here and attacked Ruby or Billy, or both?”

“Then you’ll patrol to ensure he doesn’t do anything like that again.”

“That’s it? The sheriff’s department can’t be our only defense.”

“Well, I can’t exactly use my magic in front of the outsiders now, can I?”

Emma rolls her eyes. “David and I aren’t enough.”

“Mendel is one man, Miss Swan, and delusional at that.”

“Except he’s not,” she counters.

Baffled, Regina steps back and asks, “I beg your pardon?”

“I looked into it. Greg claims the town was there one minute, disappeared the next. That would be the barrier that usually keeps the town hidden from outsiders. Then, he said he watched his dad get slammed against his truck like he was under arrest. The town sheriff at the time was responsible for that, but it was the mayor who’d insisted, who was there as it happened and did nothing to stop it. The sheriff probably worked off her orders.”

Regina sneers. “How the hell did you come across that information?”

“I used the spare keys to the agents’ rooms after I left the hospital. Found their files and read up on the guy.”

“You broke into the rooms of two FBI agents?”

“You’re welcome.”

“How does this help me, Miss Swan? I see no reason to thank you.”

“Because now I know what Greg thinks about you and this town, and we might actually stand a better chance of defending ourselves against whatever he has planned. With no help from you, I might add.”

Regina huffs and rolls her eyes.

“I did some digging on the Internet, too,” Emma adds. “There’s no record of Greg Mendel before the 90s. It’s like he just started showing up in and out psych facilities in the Northeastern states until the New York facility he found himself in finally decided he and the rest of society are better off if he’s a long-term patient and didn’t release him like the other facilities. Any chance he went by a different name when you knew him?”

“Even if I did, what good would that do us?”

Emma scoffs. “Any information on this guy helps us! We both know you had contact with him when he was about Henry’s age, but he’s a grown man seeking revenge now. You think you’re so untouchable? There are ways to get to you. There’s one person in this town that would make you the weakest you’ve ever been, and you still won’t share what you know, even if it’s the difference between catching this guy before he can go after Henry.”

“He wouldn’t,” Regina insistently growls, but there’s a flicker of doubt in her eyes.

“Do you really want to take that chance?”

Regina grinds her jaw and, a moment later, replies, “Greg Mendel may be right about the things he’s seen, and no one believed him all these years, but what’s relevant about his childhood when he’s a threat _now_?”

“Possible juvie records that might indicate how far he’s willing to go.”

“You’ve told me before that juvie records are sealed.”

“Didn’t stop you from finding a way to unseal mine,” she says bitterly.

Regina sighs. “Our plan is to stay vigilant when it comes to Greg Mendel. The town meeting is to address the agents in our company. Since Mr. Mendel hasn’t made himself known, we’ll contain the situation. Only you and your father need to know about him until he attacks.”

“What if he already has? Regina, you can’t just keep this from people. They have a right to know.”

“You’ve known about him and the FBI coming to town for less than a week. Tell me, dear, how are you handling that? Telling the others will incite more panic. Give them one problem at a time. We’ll avoid more chaos that way.”

With that, Regina motions toward the front door and spares a glance in that direction as well. It sends a clear message to Emma that she’s not wanted or needed there anymore. And they’ll go with Regina’s course of action, no room for argument.

Emma shakes her head and makes a sound of disapproval in the back of her throat, but she does leave. With a few more hours between then and the meeting, she starts the suggested patrolling early just to drive around town. If she can’t, or won’t run, she can still keep moving in some way. She even gets out of the cruiser when she pulls up to the park and walks the paved and winding trails. She uses that time to give herself a moment to breathe, but she also stays on alert with a focus on the surrounding trees for any suspicious activity. All she sees are some teens skipping school to make out in various spots in the area. Including at the castle Regina had built for Henry months ago in an elaborate demonstration of her power over him and the cursed town’s perception of the blonde.

She breaks up the one couple bold enough to heatedly make out on the landing at the bottom of the stairs leading to the slide with a brusque, “Hey, what are you doing? Small kids play here.”

The teens pull apart, but they don’t run. Instead, they stay wrapped up in each other. The only plus to the situation is that they aren’t fused at the mouth anymore.

“They’re at school. It’s not like they can see this. It’s fine,” the guy casually says, like Emma's just some pesky adult and not the damn sheriff.

“Respect the badge, dude,” Emma tells him and points to the one she has clipped to her jeans. “You should be in school. I could easily make phone calls to your parents.”

The guy acts more like a punk after hearing that, but the girl stiffens in his arms and looks at her with wide eyes like a frightened deer in the road.

“What,” she rhetorically asks the punk, “a call to your parents doesn’t scare you? The principal should also hear about this. Maybe some detention or in-school suspension?”

“Derek, stop,” the girl quietly pleads with him.

Derek scoffs and replies, “Won’t matter.”

Emma nods like she’s on his side, but adds, “Then maybe the mayor can come up with something more creative for you.”

The girl gasps and immediately pushes her way out of the guy's arms. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. You won’t find me here again. Please don’t call the Evil Queen!” The girl flees before Emma can assure her Regina wouldn’t actually torture the teens, but it also seems to have more of an impact on Derek as well.

He maintains his now only mostly unaffected demeanor as he takes a couple steps toward her and away from the slide. “She doesn’t scare me,” he states with a defiant jut of his chin.

“Oh, yeah? Because it only takes a minute to call her,” Emma says as she whips out her phone. “And she wasn’t in a good mood earlier. Plus, I’m her least favorite person, so if I call her with a problem right now, how much do you want to bet she’ll be a little less understanding than usual when I tell her about you?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

“You’re Queen Snow’s daughter. There’s no way you’d call that evil bitch to dole out punishments.”

“I think you’ll realize I’m a lot less diplomatic than Mary Margaret. I also wouldn’t resort to Madam Mayor if I thought I could lock you up without any backlash. Regina’s pretty good at getting what she wants, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, that’s why her son’s living with you now and not her, right?” It’s a low blow that forces Emma’s hand because she shrugs only seconds after he finishes that sentence.

“Your funeral,” she thoughtlessly says as she starts to call the other woman, because it’s just a turn of phrase and Regina—while fully capable—wouldn’t kill him. There are bigger issues at hand and he’s just a kid who’s only a few years older than Henry and Emma would never let her do such a thing if it really came down to that, but it’s like she struck the fear of Satan in the kid.

Derek bolts from the playground before the third unanswered ring on Emma’s end. She yells out to him just as the fourth ring is interrupted, “You want an extracurricular activity? Join the track team!”

“Miss Swan!”

Emma yanks the phone away from her ear like it’s a weapon and stares down at the screen. Seconds tick by as it logs the call time and then she hears a distant but very clear follow up exclamation of, “There better be a good reason for this, Miss Swan!”

Emma hangs up and instantly winces because that’s not going to go over well with the brunette. She stares down at the phone until the screen goes dark and waits for Regina to call her back just to breathe fire through the line, but nothing happens. She exhales for the first time in almost a minute and then slides the phone back into her pocket as she turns toward the slide again, which is when sees why maybe it’s suddenly a cool make out spot for horny teens.

One of them is likely responsible for the graffiti she finds spray-painted in blood red along the entirety of one side of the yellow plastic, and she thinks Derek is probably the first on the list of suspects who might have made the bold statement:  _Bitch Hunt!_

“Damn.” With a sigh, Emma goes back to the cruiser and checks the trunk for any supplies. No luck. “Because why would this moment be easier than any other in my life?” she asks the empty parking lot.

She closes the trunk and trudges to the driver’s door before she drives back to the station just to return to the park with several supplies. She brings soap, cloths, a scrub brush, a can of paint that she swung by the hardware store to get on her way back and a bucket that she fills with the water from one of the evenly spaced water fountains throughout the park. When she has a soapy bucket filled to the brim and the scrub brush at the ready, she miserably starts her hours long attempt to clean off the slide Henry hasn’t played on since before the curse broke.

* * *

She shows up late to the secret Town Hall meeting with wet patches and paint stains along her jeans. Dried chips of the spray paint she’d removed from the slide are embedded under her fingernails and a few spatters of the paint she’d used to cover what she couldn’t wash away decorated her hands, arms and a little bit of her neck.

Regina’s not impressed, but Emma’s tardiness and subpar appearance isn’t much of a concern once Leroy makes his grand, and even later than the blonde’s, entrance as discreetly as an ox.

He stumbles in like he’s drunk but doesn’t smell like alcohol for a change. What he lacks in his usual behavior, however, he makes up for with his many paranoid looks over his shoulder.

Emma holds her breath as she watches him, waiting for his conspicuousness—that she’s sure he’d been demonstrating long before his entrance—to attract the agents. After five minutes and no interruptions from the outsiders, Emma relaxes. Just a little. Just long enough to give Regina her full attention when a gavel hits the table at the head of the room.

“Tonight, we’re discussing our visitors from Washington D.C.,” Regina announces. “We need to keep our history a well-hidden secret from them or face the possibility of exposure.”

“None of us have magic,” Granny argues. “Way I see it is you’re the only threat to our exposure, or to us in general.”

“The fairies have magic,” Regina says with notable frustration. “And talk of curses and the other land will draw attention.”

“You want us to keep quiet then?” Thankfully, Leroy isn’t yelling yet, but he’s angry. His face is a little red and he’s squinting distrustfully at the brunette. “Should we also pretend that Red and Billy aren’t in the hospital right now? Probably because of the Evil Queen?”

“I can assure you, I had nothing to do with either of those incidents,” Regina sniffs. “Now, back to the subject at hand—”

“My granddaughter’s cloak was clearly sabotaged,” Granny says. “There’s a large tear in it.” The woman holds up the cloak in question as she stitches it back together in the middle of the meeting. By the looks of her progress, she’d probably started fixing it at Ruby’s bedside.

“I had nothing to do with that,” Regina firmly repeats.

“Why should we believe you?” Mary Margaret stands up to ask the question everyone is apparently thinking. “You’ve never given us any reason to trust what you say is true.”

Regina grins like she has something to say that would knock Mary Margaret down a peg, but she bites her tongue and maintains focus when no one else will. The grin fades completely when she says, “The agents we have staying at the bed and breakfast are from the FBI. They’re looking for anything out of the ordinary and, as you all know, none of us are ordinary.”

“We wouldn’t even be in this world if it wasn’t for your damn curse,” Michael Tillman adds to the voices against Regina.

Other townspeople chime in with their agreement of Michael’s statement.

“Why are you even in charge of this meeting,” Mary Margaret asks. “You no longer have a place in the mayoral office and therefore have no control over us or the subjects we discuss.”

“Do _you_ know anything about these agents? Or what’s best to keep all of you from being locked up?” Regina remains seated but exudes her power, her presence, all the same. She’s the calm in the outrage and adds, “Your daughter has made it perfectly clear to _me_ what’s possible if the agents hear or see anything the people of this world don't know or understand. Has she shared the same concerns with you?”

Emma slowly exhales and resists the urge to close her eyes when everyone looks at her. David and Mary Margaret look hurt and offended, but Leroy pulls attention seconds later.

“Why isn’t she still in lock up?”

“Because you still get drunk every night and there’s only one cell,” Regina answers like the impossible smartass she is.

The room erupts with various shouts of protest and spite that forces Emma onto her feet and charging toward the table Regina sits at when a flow of people in the first two rows swarm toward the brunette.

She stands directly in front of Regina with the edge of the table pressed into the backs of her thighs while the dwarves hedge through the crowd of bakers, butchers and various retailers. Others from farther back start to rush Regina from either side, so Emma sits on the tabletop and slides back until she can swing around and set her feet on the floor on the brunette’s side. It's not necessary seconds later when someone takes a swing at Regina and Emma steps in front of the flying fist just as the air shifts behind her.

The force of the punch as it hits Emma's jaw knocks the blonde back a few steps, right into the space Regina should have been occupying. Instead, Emma's left stumbling through air until a couple sets of hands against her back stop her movement.

There's a collective groan as Emma visually confirms Regina had used her magic to escape, but silence soon follows while the townspeople cautiously back away from the blonde. Emma's wincing and delicately touching her jaw when Mary Margaret and David emerge from a group to Emma's right, the same direction as the person responsible for her forming bruise.

“Emma!”

She's not sure how Mary Margaret does it, but the woman sounds as concerned as she does disappointed. It's the most Mom thing she's ever heard from someone other than Regina, and it's the first time someone's used that tone on her.

David takes large steps toward her and does the embarrassing Dad thing by checking her not yet visible injury in view of the entire town.

“David, stop,” she quietly requests as she pushes away his hand where it gently touches her chin.

“Mom, are you okay?” Henry wriggles through the crowd and runs into her to give her a crushing hug.

“Hey, Kid. Sorry you had to see that,” she softly apologizes with the hope that only Henry hears. The room's too quiet, though, and everyone's looking at them. It doesn't help that they're related to Snow White and Prince Charming either.

“The thing about this royal family,” Albert Spencer casually stalks forward through the crowd behind Emma, “is that they seem to think they're automatically in charge, but it's their blood feud with the Evil Queen that trapped us here in the first place. And now their daughter is defending the witch? It makes you wonder who you're ultimately following, doesn't it? Snow and her... _Prince_ …or the Evil Queen?”

A few murmurs erupt.

“Hey, now,” Granny barks at him and then glances around at those eating up the arrogant man’s words.

David clenches his jaw and advances on Spencer until they’re standing nose-to-nose. Emma thinks she hears him growl, “You’re the only one who’s worked with her in the past.”

“Ah, but you’re the one who worked with her just as recently as last week,” Spencer announces. It’s more for show than it is a response to David and it works because even more townspeople add to the murmurs.

“Not by choice,” David says through gritted teeth. “It’s not like we teamed up so that she could imprison someone and poison another. Like you did.”

Spencer rolls his eyes and responds with, “That was business. A trade. In the old land. This? What you did? It happened here and there was no deal.”

“How would you even know anything about it? Are you stalking my family?”

Spencer chuckles and takes a step back. He swipes a thumb over his bottom lip like he’s wiping away blood and then turns away from David. “She’ll always be tied to your family. There will always come a time you’ll reach out to her and she’ll always need the protection of our land’s _unfit_ rulers. And we’ll always have reason to doubt you. You, Snow White and the Evil Queen. And that _wolf_ is your friend. Your friend who’s attacked an innocent man because she’s unhinged. A monster.”

“The only monster here is you,” David shouts and points a stern, accusing finger at the man’s back.

“I didn’t invite this, any of this, upon us,” Spencer says over his shoulder. “But…I do plan to eradicate the problem. Anyone who agrees this madness should be stopped is free to follow.”

Then, the real trouble starts.


	6. Chapter 6

“You check the hospital, make sure they don’t get to Ruby. I’ll find Regina in case she’s who they’re after,” Emma commands.

David nods and touches Granny’s shoulder before the two of them start to head out, but Mary Margaret resists.

“What? No. You heard George,” Snow says. “Ruby’s his target. And Regina has magic. It’s the people that need protection from her.”

“It’s not like I’m asking anyone to come with me,” Emma tells her. “You can join David.”

“After you let her take Henry? I don’t think so.”

Emma scoffs and rests a hand on the back of Henry’s neck. She glares at Mary Margaret as she says, “Henry, we’re going to check on Regina.”

Mary Margaret huffs, but Emma and Henry head for the door without looking back. Emma hears the woman’s shuffling footsteps and knows Mary Margaret’s following them. When they step outside, however, Emma and Henry go one way while the sound of Mary Margaret’s footsteps and huffing lessen. Once she and Henry make it to the Bug, she looks over the hood as the pixie haired woman jogs after David and Granny.

“You think she’s okay?”

Emma’s head snaps down to Henry who’s looking up at her with one foot in the car and the other still on the pavement. He’s looking up expectantly at her and doesn’t seem interested in getting in until Emma answers. “Yeah, I’m sure she’s fine. Nothing wrong with looking in on her, though. Right?”

Except checking on Regina is more difficult than she thought. Anything involving the brunette always is, but this time Regina’s difficult in the way that she’s gone. The blonde isn’t surprised that the Mercedes isn’t in the driveway. She’d caught sight of it still parked outside Town Hall when she and Henry had left, but she also doesn’t see Regina anywhere in the house or out in the yard. Alone in Regina’s bedroom, she also sees that the bed is still made and hasn’t spotted a pair of shoes out of place. Not that she expects that from the impeccable Madam Mayor.

She hears someone approach and spins around hoping it’s Regina but it’s, of course, the more logical option: their son. She sighs and rhetorically asks him, “Regina couldn’t have just been here? Or, you know, _not poofed_ away in the first place?”

“Would you have wanted her to stay and fight?”

Emma scrunches up her face. “You’re right,” she admits as she shakes her head. “Still, it’d be so much easier if she just… You know what? I’m gonna call her.”

Henry sits down on the bed and waits while Emma dials her programed speed dial for the brunette. She checks on him as she paces in front of the bed before making her way back to the window. She looks out at the yard again, at the apple tree with one still-mangled branch from her chainsaw attack, when Regina picks up.

“Is Henry okay?” Regina doesn’t sound panicked or all that concerned, which Emma takes to mean that she’s safe. For now.

“Yeah, he’s fine. He’s with me at your place.”

“Then why did you call?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she sarcastically responds, “maybe because you ditched me in the middle of a fight. I took a punch for you, by the way.”

“If you want me to apologize for your stupidity, I won’t.”

Emma covers her eyes with her free hand and starts to rub them, takes a deep breath and then tries again. “Spencer formed a mob and we’re not entirely sure who’s he’s after at this point. Could be you, could be Ruby.”

“Thanks for the update, but I think I can handle myself. _I’m_ the one with magic, remember? What do they have? Torches and angry words?”

“It’s still not an ideal situation, especially not with the feds in town.”

“So you keep reminding me. Wasn’t that exactly the point I made at the meeting _before_ the townspeople tried to corner me?”

Emma sighs again, heavily, and rests her hand on the window pane. She leans into it and bows her head as she asks, “Where are you?”

“Somewhere only I know about,” the brunette answers. “I’ll be fine. I thought I was supposed to call you if I needed anything, not the other way around.”

“Do you get off on being a pain in my ass?”

“What does that even mean?” Emma spins around at the sound of Henry’s confused, naïve voice and sees the preteen staring up at her with a furrowed brow and dubiously quizzical eyes.

“Never mind,” Emma says before she turns away from Henry and starts pacing the room. “Listen, I don’t know if it’s a good thing to bring magic to this fight, but you could be useful.”

Regina scoffs. “You just said you didn’t know if they were after me or Ruby and now you want me to risk being targeted anyway just to be your tactical solution? I don’t think so, Miss Swan.”

“It’s not the best plan, but it’s all I got. Obviously, you don’t have to do anything.”

Regina amusedly chuckles. “That’s a truth you and I have known for a while.”

Emma rolls her eyes and goes on to say, “I just thought maybe it might help to have you around. And…it wouldn’t be so bad to have you somewhere I can see you.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Well? I just told you we don’t know for sure who the mob’s after.”

“Maybe the townspeople want us both, although why they’d attack one of their own—”

“Because they can’t trust Ruby is good anymore. My parents and I have also been called into question.”

“The high and mighty Charmings being viewed as less than rightful heroes?”

“Yeah, Spencer really did a number on everyone with a few firm accusations,” Emma mumbles.

“Then how can you be sure they won’t come after any of _you_? Maybe I’m the last thing on their minds.”

“Not likely. You’re the root of the problem according to Spencer. My family’s connection to you is the reason why we might not be as trustworthy as the town’s been led to believe over the many non-cursed _and_ cursed years.”

“In any case, I can assure you, where I am is much safer than anywhere you or anyone else could hide from angry citizens.”

Just then Emma’s phone starts beeping in her ear for call-waiting. She pulls it away to check who’s trying to reach her and sees David’s name on the caller ID. “Hang on,” she tells Regina before she hears the start of a protest she quickly cuts off when she answers the other call. “David?”

“Hey,” he greets somewhat forlornly. “We have a problem. Ruby…she locked Granny in the cell, cuffed Mary Margaret to it and knocked me out.”

“She’s gone?! How the hell does one person take down _three_ people?”

 “Granny was going into the cell with her and at the last second Ruby shrugged her off, shut the door and bumped into Mary Margaret who had my cuffs,” David informs her. “Ruby grabbed them before Mary Margaret could even blink and then elbowed me in the face before she used some of that pre-shift wolf strength to throw me across the room. She got maybe a ten minute head start. Emma, if they get to her before we do—”

“I was at town hall,” she reminds him. “We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. I may even have a secret weapon to help keep the masses in check.”

“You can’t mean Regina.”

“She has magic and some people are still afraid of her. It’ll work…if I can get her to agree. But that’s not likely to happen if I keep her on hold any longer.”

“You have her on hold?”

“Don’t have an aneurism. To you and _everyone_ else, she’s the Evil Queen. But to me, she’s just Regina. She wants to change, she just needs everyone to see it.”

“I don’t know about that, but you’re right about one thing. Some people _are_ still afraid of her. And the rest of them, your mom and I included, don’t trust her.”

“I don’t know the specifics of what she’s done. I don’t know what’s been done to her, and after having met Cora I _know_ she’s been through some stuff, but I know _her_.”

David sighs, but doesn’t argue. Tiredly, he agrees. “If she’s willing to help, maybe it won’t be the end of the world. Considering the number of people we’re up against and the _asshole_ leading them, a little…fire power might actually be a good thing.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her, and what I should _still_ be telling her right now. I’ll catch up with you soon. Just…look for flames.”

“Not funny.”

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

Emma looks out the window again as she ends that call and resumes the other. “That was David,” she tells Regina without even checking that the brunette’s still there. “Ruby ran off. For a wolf, I think she’s acting more like a lamb running right to the slaughter.”

“They’re gonna kill her?” Henry asks.

“Shit.”

“Do you swear and talk about murder in front of Henry often, Miss Swan?”

“After what he read in that book about y—You know what? We don’t have time for this.” As if on cue, just as she’d told David to look for flames, she sees orange-red flickering in the distance. “Damn it,” she mutters before she speaks up and directly to Regina, “Just…if you decide to help, follow the torches. Looks like they’re on Daffodil. Might be heading toward the cannery.”

Regina starts to protest, but Emma hangs up before she hears more than, “Wait, Miss Swan—”

“Come on,” Emma urges Henry with a pat to his shoulder while she pockets her phone with the other.

He gets up and walks ahead of her, something he does with Regina—and only very recently with her—as they head out yet again. Even in Emma’s beat up and loud car, they hear Ruby howl at least once before they catch up to the rallied and rioting townspeople. And there are many.

A lot of familiar faces surround an alley along the harbor but just beyond a residential area when Emma wedges herself and Henry through the crowd to get a better look. Most of the others glare into the dark where Emma thinks she hears a huff and a whimper just past where David stands with one hand outstretched and the other clutching Ruby’s cloak.

“What the hell is going on here, Sheriff?” Suddenly, Agent Scully’s raised and alarmed voice cuts through the mumbles and fluttering flames.

Emma heavily sighs with audible frustration. “Of _course_ you’re here,” she replies, and not quietly.

“Hard to miss an entire town shouting through the streets,” Agent Mulder adds. With audible suspicion, he further explains, “They passed by us when we were out trying to find a place to eat that hadn’t closed early. You know, two people hospitalized within maybe twenty-four hours of each other and now the town’s carrying _pitch forks_?” Even though his question sounds more like a statement, his expression is a little more excited and almost unsurprised. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it,” he rhetorically asks his partner and slips a bag of sunflower seeds out of a pocket inside his ankle-length coat.

For what feels like the millionth time within only a week, the feds and anything fairytale related decide to present themselves at the same moment. Ruby barks and snarls before Emma can even formulate any response. She’s tempted to close her eyes—in defeat or out of exhaustion, she’s not sure and it doesn’t matter—but she resists the urge and squeezes Henry’s shoulders.

“What—” Scully starts to ask when someone more agile on their toes than Emma interrupts.

“Rabid dog.” Regina sounds as irritated as usual around Emma when she walks up to their little group. She flips her hair out of her face on either side before pulling her jacket tighter around her frame and glaring at Emma. The brunette then turns her attention to Henry and melts for just a second. “Sweetheart, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Neither should the whole town,” Mulder says with a mouthful of seeds. Soon after, he spits out the shells onto the ground very close to Regina and Emma.

Both glare at him, but Emma’s the only one who does it with an open mouth.

Scully, at least, has the decency to grab Mulder’s wrist to stop his hand from bringing another handful of sunflower seeds toward his mouth again. “Stop it,” the redhead whispers.

Emma doesn’t quite hear the words, but she reads the other woman’s lips and hears just a partial exhale when Scully speaks. It’s enough to understand the agent before she shakes her head and focuses on the brunette again. “So glad you’re here,” she says only half-sarcastically.

“You should be,” Regina says before she invades Emma’s personal space and very quietly confesses, “I had to rely on my ‘skills’ to find you.”

Emma thinks about what that means for a minute when Regina, irritated, takes pity on her and wiggles her fingers. The blonde’s eyes widen and she asks, “Like a LoJack? You can do that?”

“I suppose I should be glad you left your jacket at my house,” Regina tells her with a raised eyebrow.

Emma furrows hers and then glances at the agents just as they share a look. Mulder looks highly amused and Scully’s lips are parted like she has something she wants to say but knows how to keep it to herself. At least, maybe, until she and Mulder are alone.

Looking back at Regina, Emma’s about to ask how her jacket helped the other woman find her when her ears perk up as the crowd apparently sways toward the alley and David starts to raise his voice.

“Everybody, just take a step back,” he yells over the growing murmurs.

Emma pulls Henry close. She crosses her arms over his chest as she wraps them around him like car seat seatbelt while they stumble forward with the others. Within seconds, she feels a hand slip between her bicep and side before tugging her back by her arm. A look over her shoulder confirms the last thing she expects to see. 

Regina.

The older woman keeps her eyes on the alley—what little of it they can see from where they’re clustered in with everyone else—but squeezes Emma’s arm any time it feels as though the brunette’s losing her grip against the moving crowd.

Emma looks from Regina to the firm hand that holds her back from what might become a stampede. She looks up again a few seconds later, still stunned and not hiding it, when Regina’s eyes lock on hers. Regina abruptly removes her hand after that and Emma immediately feels the loss like a shiver-inducing chill despite all the lit torches around them. Then, she looks just past Regina and notices the agents staring. Again.

Ever observant, and _nosy_ , Mulder doesn’t look interested in his sunflower seeds anymore and Scully’s almost fascinated as far as Emma can tell. The blonde turns away from them—and Regina—and squints as she attempts to see David through the throng of people between her and the alley. She bobs and weaves with just her head at first and catches a glimpse of him crouching with his arms out. A bright cardigan and doily-like shirt suddenly impede her view before she redirects her line of sight and spots Mary Margaret rushing toward her with a mix of concern and relief.

“Emma,” Mary Margaret greets her a little breathlessly, as though she ran miles to reach her. “Your—” Before the pixie-haired woman can say anything devastating to their biggest, and so far still kept, secrets, her eyes dart in the agents’ direction and she corrects herself. “David’s not having the best of luck. Everyone here is getting more and more restless by the minute and they’re starting to follow him down the alley.”

“So, why are you here and not trying to hold them back?” Mary Margaret gapes at Regina while Emma shoots her a look she knows the brunette would understand to mean: _not helping_ , but Regina doesn’t acknowledge her this time. Instead, she keeps her attention on the school teacher as she cocks a hip and maintains an air of her usual authority.

Their wayward wolf snarls and Emma hears what sounds like a snap of sharp teeth. The people in front of her either gasp or take a step back while thrusting their weapons forward in weak defense.

Regina scoffs and pushes through the crowd without a care that she quickly becomes a target when they notice her. People swell with rage in her presence. Some shout things like, “This is your fault” and “You set her loose” or “This is exactly what you wanted.” Regina stays the course, though. She makes her way into the alley, even when a few hands reach for her and try to halt her progress or maybe try to harm her. She’s out of Emma’s sightline then and that makes the blonde nervous for a few reasons.

“Watch Henry,” she tells Mary Margaret as she nudges him closer to the other woman.

Mary Margaret starts to object, but Emma remains intent on catching up to Regina and David. The crowd’s more resistant to let anyone else through by the time she makes her attempt, so she shoves a handful of people that glare at her before and after contact until she successfully joins the other two in the alley.

David’s on his ass with the cloak still outstretched toward Ruby and looks like he’s in the process of trying to stand up again while Regina’s inching past him and closer to the transformed waitress. Emma goes to him first, grabs him under the arm and helps him up, but she keeps her eyes on the mayor. She only looks away for just a second when David stumbles as soon as he’s on his feet and then she’s back to watching Regina approach Ruby.

Regina’s cautious like David had been, but she doesn’t move as slowly as him. She’s more direct and unafraid, which shouldn’t be surprising and yet Emma’s still a little in awe. And still nervous.

“Regina,” she whispers through gritted teeth.

Regina stops, but she remains facing Ruby where the wolf is cornered between the mayor and two storage containers. “Do you need compliments or the tough love approach, dear?”

Ruby growls, quiet and low in her gut, but Emma doubts anyone other than her or David hear it.

“You’re not sure,” Regina notes, as though the growl was a coherent response. “But you’ll hear me out?”

Ruby growls a little louder that time and stalks out of the shadows until Emma, and ostensibly Regina, see her fierce and focused eyes staring right at the brunette.

“You’re provoking her,” Emma hisses in warning.

Regina continues to ignore her and keeps her attention on Ruby just like the wolf’s attention hasn’t faltered on the mayor since she’d started creeping toward their furry friend. “Let me make it simple for you. This is the first time you’ve shifted since before the curse and the first thing you did when you realized you _might_ have attacked the mechanic, something no one has yet proved was actually you, was come out here to face the townspeople for what you feared you’d done.”

Ruby keeps growling, but they’re quieter and few and far between.

“That’s not the action of a monster. Believe me,” Regina continues. “I never once sought out punishment for any of the things I did. Of course, I felt I’d already suffered enough and that’s why I did at least half the things I did, but this isn’t about me.”

Ruby starts to pace after that. Slowly, she prowls in front of Regina and never once takes her eyes off the woman. Ruby looks like she’s either ready to circle Regina or pounce on her but maintains a barely safe distance from the sorceress as she walks back and forth, three steps in either direction.

“You have a choice,” Regina tells her. “Right now. You can choose to lash out, choose to allow these _Neanderthals_ to maim you...or you can shift back and face _yourself_. That’s half the battle. But take it from someone who’s done far more damage just as a severely flawed human than you’ve ever done in wolf form.”

Ruby snarls and lunges forward just a step but it’s threatening all the same and followed by a deep growl.

Emma swipes the cloak from David’s hand then and takes a few rushed steps toward Regina. Thankfully, she’s directly behind the brunette and therefore hidden from Ruby’s view because any sudden movements would most likely elicit a fight or flight response from her friend in her current state. And the wolf appears prone to fight.

She takes slower steps after that to ensure Ruby doesn’t feel threatened regardless of whether she can see Emma, and all the while the blonde watches Regina calmly stand face-to-sharp teeth with Ruby.

Regina sighs and then slowly, very slowly, starts to crouch down like David had before his effort to put himself and Ruby at eye level had backfired. “Just so we’re clear, I don’t plan on getting on my knees,” Regina insists. “Not for you and certainly not in this filthy alley.”

Ruby straightens up. Her head’s no longer bowed like it’d been when she’d lunged toward Regina and she starts to tip it to one side as though she’s sizing up the brunette.

“I may not know you like Snow and her rags to riches prince, but I do know what monsters, _real_ monsters, are like. Even in this form, that’s not what you are.”

“She’s right,” David pipes up.

Emma barely sees Regina turn her head before she turns her own to look at David.

“Before Granny and I found her,” he starts to explain, “we found Spencer’s car. We found a dog whistle, a pair of scissors and part of Ruby’s cloak in the trunk.”

“You forget, Shepherd,” Spencer abruptly speaks up. “I’m a lawyer. And as a lawyer I can tell you that searching my car without a warrant won’t hold up in a court of law.”

“And you forget we’re in a self-governed town,” Regina haughtily reminds him. “There doesn’t have to be a trial. As you’ve clearly shown by forming a  _mob_.” The brunette turns to Ruby again and tells her, “See that? _That’s_ a true villain.”

“It’s not like you’re any better,” David bitterly says. “But at least there’s proof that you weren’t behind Billy’s attack.”

“But...Ruby…” Emma sadly trails off as she realizes something she really doesn’t want to voice.

David averts his eyes and the rest of his expression is overwhelmingly grim.

“It’s not her fault,” Regina suddenly, and loudly, defends Ruby.

Emma whips her head around to stare wide-eyed at the mayor just as Regina faces Ruby again and speaks directly to the wolf.

“It’s not your fault,” Regina insists. Her tone is soft and almost pleading. It’s the kind of tone Emma knows Regina uses solely with Henry. “George _used_ you. You’re just as much a victim as Billy.”

Ruby whimpers and takes a few steps back before she moves back between the containers.

“You shouldn’t have to pay for what _he_ did,” Regina adds, still crouched at eye level with Ruby. “Take back control. The control George stole from you. I’d tell you to make him suffer because I’m a firm believer in revenge, but you’re not me. Or him. You’re nothing like us and you need to remember that. Remember that you’re _not_ what George forced you to do just to get _his_ revenge on Charming.”

Ruby whimpers a few more times until she quiets down and then, surprisingly, sits down. She bows her head while Regina carefully, and a little awkwardly in her crouched position, closes the space between them. Ruby remains tranquil and doesn’t even look up as Regina approaches with an outstretched hand. Ruby also doesn’t flinch when Regina finally diminishes the gap and places her hand on Ruby’s fur.

Regina pets her, runs her hand down Ruby’s head to her back and occasionally implements her nails and a few squeezes of her fingers until the wolf leans forward and rests her head in Regina’s lap.

Emma stares at the two of them, amazed. Regina’s actions keep her entranced for just a few seconds more when she finally snaps out of it and takes the first opportunity any of them have had to change Ruby back.

She tries not to run the rest of the way to Ruby but doesn’t waste much time before she drapes the hood over her friend and watches the wolf morph under the recently mended material into the spirited woman she recognizes. Almost as soon as Ruby’s human again, though, Emma sees her body shake where she’s on her knees and still curled into Regina.

Regina keeps running her hand down Ruby’s cloak-covered back and even whispers something close to the younger woman’s ear that Emma can’t quite understand. Whatever the mayor says makes Ruby sniffle and shake a little harder, which doesn’t sit well with Emma.

“Regina, what are you doing,” she asks.

Regina glares at her and then looks past Emma at what the blonde assumes is either David or the mob before Regina rhetorically asks, “Don’t you have a former DA to arrest, Sheriff?”

Ruby continues to shake but then Emma hears it. Quiet sobbing reaching a crescendo. Ruby’s crying and Regina still has one hand on Ruby’s back while the other comes to rest over the hand the waitress has on her knee. Then, Ruby’s face peeks out from under the hood as it starts to fall away while she shakes again and again. When her wet eyes find Emma’s, she whispers through her tears with a slightly raspy voice, “It’s okay.”

Emma reads Ruby’s lips better than she can hear the words, but she still gets the message and nods her agreement before turning toward Spencer. As soon as they make eye contact, the man grits his teeth and narrows his eyes before he tries to make a run for it.

Gun in hand, something Emma had failed to notice until that moment, Spencer pushes his way past at least five people before David shouts, “Stop him!” Spencer almost plows into Henry only a second later when Mulder and Scully raise their own guns and warn him—

“FBI! Put down your weapon.” Agent Scully’s voice has never sounded as good to Emma’s ears as it does just then.

Emma sags a little with relief and watches as Spencer lowers his gun before Mulder does the same and reaches for his cuffs. Scully continues to hold Spencer at gunpoint as the mob finally starts to thin out and only holsters her firearm once Mulder has Spencer restrained, which is also when Emma finally takes her hand off her own gun at the small of her back.

She looks back at Regina and Ruby, still huddled together, before she walks toward the agents. “Need an escort back to the station?” She offers her assistance as David walks alongside her to the small cluster of people remaining just before Henry barrels into her for a hug. “Whoa. Hey, Kid.”

“You did it,” he congratulates her with his cheek pressed firmly against her stomach.

“Actually, Regina did,” she corrects him. He immediately lifts his head and looks up at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. “Give her a minute and then give her a hug. She’s the one who deserves it.”

Henry lets go of her and steps off to the side to look down the alley. At the same time, Mulder and Scully poke their heads around Emma on either side and try to get a good look for themselves.

Scully frowns and asks, “Isn’t that the woman we found in the woods?”

“I thought she was in the hospital,” Mulder says.

“She was,” his partner confirms before she looks at Emma and asks, “What’s she’s doing here?”

“She’s the one who attacked Billy,” Spencer quickly replies. “You’ve arrested the wrong person, agents.”

“Nice try,” Emma says as she roughly grabs him under the arm and starts to usher him away from the scene. “You set a rabid dog loose on Billy. Ruby, unfortunately, put it down before anyone knew you’d weaponized an innocent being.”

“Rabid dog.” Spencer scoffs and it turns into a laugh. “Is that the lie the Evil Queen helped you come up with?”

Emma looks up at Mulder and Scully just to see Mulder’s eyes light up with curiosity and Scully’s to narrow with heavy skepticism.

“That _werewolf_ is a monster and it’s only a matter of time before she kills on her own anyway. It wouldn’t be the first time,” Spencer adds. “Just because I helped speed it along to show everyone that your family are the last people they should trust and keep in power doesn’t change the fact that Ruby is a killer.”

Emma watches Scully’s eyebrows jump toward her hairline. The blonde can’t tell if she’s starting to believe what she’s hearing or if Spencer’s dug a bigger hole for himself, but Emma takes a chance on feeding Scully’s rationalism and says, “Yes, Ruby killed the dog you abused by forcing it to attack a human being. If that dog’s what you’re calling a werewolf, I think you’re more suited for the psychiatric ward than a cell at the station.”

“You can’t do this,” he argues with a voice as rough as his angrily twisted up face. “I’m not insane. I am a _king_.”

“I guess we’ll need an escort back to the hospital,” Scully says, and draws Emma’s attention back to the agents.

She sees Mulder’s eyebrows lift as well and his curiosity doesn’t look as piqued as his disappointment when he says, “Lead the way, Sheriff.”


	7. Chapter 7

She feels Mulder and Scully hovering while she fills out the paperwork on Albert Spencer—or, more accurately, King George—in the dingy hospital basement. She’s never been below parking level until now. She also had to wait for Nurse Ratched to buzz her in because a certain fancypants mayor made it impossible for anyone without the super secret code to access the psych ward. If she’d known that before she and the agents had left the alley, she would have asked Regina to either share that information or join her, but instead she’d been forced to look incompetent in front of people watching—and probably judging—her every move.

“How many patients do you have down here,” Mulder asks with wonder.

Out of the corner of her eye, Emma can tell Mulder’s pacing a little as he looks down the greenish and dimly lit hallway and up at the water-stained ceiling.

“A fair amount,” Nurse Ratched calmly evades.

“This floor looks a little...out of date with its health code compliance,” Scully surmises.

“All of the patients are adequately taken care of and I don’t have any complaints about the working conditions here,” Nurse Ratched replies. “Mayor Mills provides more than enough for this hospital. _All_ of it.”

Emma snorts as she finishes signing over her once-prisoner. “You’d be the only one in town to think Regina’s a good provider. Or to be on her side at all.”

“Not the _only_ one, Sheriff,” Nurse Ratched says with an edge that immediately gets the blonde to look up.

Pen halted mid-signature, Emma squints at the other woman for a moment before she asks, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No one likes Albert Spencer,” Nurse Ratched begins to explain and cocks a hip that she easily rests a hand on in a very Regina-like pose. “And yet they all allowed him to whip them into a frenzy about a waitress?”

“Psychosis isn’t often detectable,” Scully interjects. “I’m sure he made a convincing argument as to why that woman should be viewed as a threat. And when he didn’t get what he wanted, his true beliefs surfaced in what’s known as a mental break.”

Nurse Ratched arches a brow and gives Scully so much attitude in just one look. Again, eerily like Regina. When Scully’s eyebrows jump toward her hairline and the woman drops her jaw slightly, message potentially received, Nurse Ratched turns to Emma again. “It wasn’t just about Ruby Lucas. You and the mayor—”

“Whoa. Okay, first? There is no me and the mayor,” she immediately defends herself.

“Sure there is,” Nurse Ratched continues. “You share a child, don’t you?”

“That’s not… We’re still not… We’re not even _friends_ . We don’t even _like_ each other.”

Nurse Ratched shrugs and very casually but not at all quietly says, “She hasn’t been one for tenderness or sweet nothings in all the time either of us have known her.”

Emma gapes at the other woman. Her mind shouts out several responses to what she heard, but none leave her mouth. She’s only capable of making strangled sounds during her failed attempts to speak until, finally, she settles on a singular thought. “You and _Regina_?”

Nurse Ratched smirks as she somewhat coyly looks down at the paperwork in front of her on the desk. The dark blonde haired woman picks at the corners of a few of the papers and eventually meets Emma’s eyes again, still smirking. “A lady doesn’t kiss and tell. Not if she wants to survive what our dear Mayor would do if she found out I had.” The woman winks and then looks over Emma’s shoulder at the agents.

Emma soon does the same and Mulder looks smug between all three women in his presence. Scully squints at him like she knows what he’s thinking and then further proves Emma’s theory is probably right when she backhands him in the chest.

“I’d watch yourself,” Nurse Ratched tells him. “Thinking about other women in any way is how you end up frustrated and on the pull-out couch.”

Emma arches a brow and looks from Mulder to Scully just as the redhead turns to Nurse Ratched with an expression that screams, “ _Excuse me?_ ” Scully doesn’t say that, though. The woman just continues to stare, a little outraged and a lot shocked.

Emma smiles but refrains from laughing. “Nice to see the assumption goes both ways,” she mumbles.

“While there’s a small contingency of people that don’t hate the mayor, the point is that she has you in her corner, doesn’t she?” Nurse Ratched pointedly asks the question of Emma. “I heard you were the one to invite her to the dinner a few nights ago.”

“Yeah, for Henry,” she immediately replies.

Nurse Ratched rolls her eyes and drops the hand from her hip. She sets the paperwork off to the side on her desk and then steps around it on her way toward Emma. “Speaking of your son, maybe you want to get back to him?” She pauses beside Emma and motions to the door before she adds, “Mayor Mills isn’t a fan of your... _roommates_ and, since he’s not with you, I assume you left him in their care. That’s a good way to start another fight, Sheriff.”

The agents trail behind her as Emma walks alongside Nurse Ratched to the door, which the woman then holds open for all three law enforcement officials. Mulder and Scully follow her up the stairs and to the Intensive Care Unit as though they’re still working together. She rolls her eyes as she makes her way toward Billy’s room to check on him but doesn’t otherwise complain about their hovering, especially not to their faces. Then, she sees—

“Regina?”

The brunette stands outside Billy’s room with an arm almost protectively crossed over her torso. Regina’s expression gives little away other than the fact that she’s looking past the half-closed blinds to see inside. Even when she turns to confront Emma, little about her neutral features change.

“What’s up?” Emma looks from Regina to Ruby and back again.

Regina looks over her shoulder through the window, following Emma’s gaze, as she steps toward the blonde. When she looks at Emma again and stops just one step short of touching noses, Regina says, “Ruby wanted to see him. I assume she’ll stay here for a while.”

“Considering she shouldn’t have left the hospital in the first place, that seems like a good idea,” Scully mutters, but she’s not exactly trying to keep quiet.

Now, it’s Emma turn to look over her shoulder when Regina looks past the sheriff to glare at the redhead.

“Physically, she’s fine,” Regina almost growls at the agent. “She was examined before she left. She can go where she wants.”

“Okay,” Emma interrupts and gives Regina her full attention. She lowers her voice when she says, “That’s the second time today you’ve come to her defense. I didn’t think you were friends.”

“We’re not,” Regina answers after she snaps her attention back to Emma. The brunette keeps her voice low as well.

“She trusts you a hell of a lot for someone who’s not her friend.”

“Like you trust me?”

Emma stammers, “I-I-I never said I trust you.”

Regina smirks and leans in until her lips almost brush Emma’s cheek when she all but quietly purrs, “You wouldn’t ask for my help as much as you do if you didn’t trust me even a little bit.”

Emma shivers when she feels Regina’s warm breath on her skin and hears the bass of the older woman’s voice when she speaks so softly and yet so suggestively.

Regina steps back with a teeth-baring grin. Her eyes skate over to Mulder and Scully again, who are probably either shocked, intrigued or barely containing laughter. Emma doesn’t know because she doesn’t turn to look at them that time. She keeps her eyes forward, focused on Regina as the other woman meets her gaze again. Only then does the brunette’s grin fade.

Emma watches Regina frown while looking to the left and right of her. Then, the brunette gives voice to the reason for her displeasure.

“Where’s Henry?”

“At the loft.”

“With _them_?” Regina scoffs. “You’ve been back for how long and you’re still just pawning him off on them?”

“Hey, what did you want me to do? It’s not like he was going back to your place and, even if you could take him with you, you came here,” Emma argues. She feels a fire inside herself much like the flames Regina had conjured at her back earlier that day, knows she’s twisted her face into something hard and angry.

“Having him here is better than just dropping him off with someone else. Ever since- Since things changed, you’ve left him again and again. He might like who he’s spending time with, but I can assure you it’s doing more harm than good when you leave him behind.”

“Don’t you dare,” she growls.

“Believe it or not, I’m not actually telling you this to deliberately hurt you. I’m telling you the truth. If you would just _think_ about it—”

“I did _everything_ to get back here,” Emma starts to yell. She doesn’t even realize she’s in Regina’s face until her boots almost stomp down on the mayor’s heels. “And let’s not forget that _you_ were the reason I wasn’t here in the first place. If I hadn’t stepped in when I did, _you_ would have been there. _Alone_ . And even if there was the slightest chance you had _one_ person trying to bring you home, you might have already been gone because the only people around that place  _hated_ you.”

Regina clenches her jaw. Emma’s eyes drop to watch the woman’s mouth work, see how she’s likely grinding her teeth behind her bitterly pursed lips. “I appreciate the sacrifices you made, Miss Swan,” Regina growls. Her voice is so low and deep that Emma’s sure the agents she’s now only vaguely aware are still in the hall with them can’t hear. “I’m just trying to help Henry by reminding you of a truth _you’ve_ already lived. I’ve accepted he’s not ready to come home and that he’s not the only one hesitant to let him go, but he needs to know you’re _here_. You’ve fought so hard to prove yourself to him. Well, you’re always going to have to do that.”

Emma opens her mouth to argue another point, but Regina says it for her.

“Just as _I’m_ always going to have to do that. And it’s not just because of the things I’ve done. It’s not just because you already gave him up once. It’s because we’re his _mothers_. You wanted that title? Well, dear, this is what it means to be one.”

Emma puffs out a sigh and the hair framing Regina’s face blows back just the slightest bit in response. Proof she’s still so close, too close, to the other woman. She ducks her head for a second and takes a step back as she relaxes her previously tense shoulders. When she meets Regina’s eyes again, her hands are stuffed in the back pockets of her jeans and there’s breathing room between them. Feeling small, she quietly asks, “He knows this is only temporary, right? That I’d be there if I didn’t have to deal with...everything?”

Exasperated, Regina answers, “I’m not him. I can’t tell you what he does or doesn’t know. Besides, his brain might understand, but his heart might not.”

Emma tries to say something, anything. A few stuttered syllables emerge, but nothing else makes it past her throat. She stares down at her feet when words fail her and, for a moment, there’s silence.

Until Regina cuts through it with sharp words that make Emma jump, even when the blonde knows logically they can’t be directed at her.

“Do you mind?”

After Emma’s startled into looking at Regina again, she sees the brunette’s eyes looking past her at where she remembers the agents were standing before she’d lost herself in the fight. She looks over her shoulder just as Mulder makes a face. He puckers his lips like he ate something sour, but he casts innocent looking eyes up at the ceiling as though to convey the lie that he didn’t see anything as he starts to back away from them. Scully holds their gaze for a moment longer as she moves toward another hallway with him. She looks only mildly apologetic and Emma thinks the redhead’s probably thinking more critically about what she witnessed before they disappear from view.

Emma’s not really sure about that, but she doesn’t dwell on the possibilities. She feels vulnerable and cut open and just wants to be with Henry.

“You want to see him, don’t you?”

Emma’s head snaps back to Regina. The brunette looks at her with softer eyes than she’s used to having directed at her, but she still looks mostly as imposing as ever.

“I know the feeling,” Regina adds to her question, which was actually just a statement because Emma’s never been able to hide much—if anything—from the woman. Then, Regina turns back to the window looking in on Ruby and Billy. “Go. I’m not stopping you, and now the agents aren’t either. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Emma squints at her and then the fragility she felt only seconds ago falls away. Regina’s haughty tone brings her back to herself and the blonde spits out, “It would have been nicer if you’d sent them away _before_ I sounded desperate and weak.”

Regina smirks and says, “I’m a Queen, not a Goddess. Some things are just out of my control.”

Emma rolls her eyes and almost spins on the short heels of her boots to finally make her escape, but then she catches Ruby looking through the window. Looking at Regina. She takes a deep breath and then asks, “Seriously, what’s the deal with you two? I mean, the nurse in the psych ward I kinda get, but you and Ruby?”

Regina goes from calm and soothing to harsh and displeased when she whips her head around to glare at Emma. “There’s nothing going on with either of them and myself,” the brunette sharply declares.

“Maybe not recently, but how about a history?”

Regina mockingly laughs at Emma. “Not with Ruby.”

“But Nurse Ratched?”

“It doesn’t concern you. And before you try to argue how not telling you might put Henry in danger, it has nothing to do with that Mendel character or the FBI investigating my town.”

“Probably not, but humor me. Curious minds want to know.”

Regina’s lips curl into a predatory grin then and she asks, “Are you, Miss Swan?”

Emma furrows her brow. “Am I what?”

Regina lifts a hand before Emma has a chance to do more than flinch before the mayor wraps a blonde tendril around her index and middle fingers. She tugs just the slightest bit as if to bring Emma closer by the small amount of hair in her hold. “Curious,” the older woman purrs. Her voice drips with sexual innuendo and it sends a shiver down Emma’s spine.

Regina chuckles, a husky and rich sound in Emma’s ear, and it’s the only indication that Regina either saw or felt Emma’s embarrassing reaction. It doesn’t help that Emma can’t, won’t, look at Regina after that.

Emma clears her throat and side steps away from Regina. “Maybe I’ll just ask Ruby,” she says before she attempts to go inside Billy’s room.

She doesn’t see Regina roll her eyes or otherwise drop her amused expression, but she hears the lack of baiting and playfulness in the other woman’s voice when Regina grabs her elbow and stops her.

“Don’t bother her,” Regina tells her. “If you really want to know about what happened in the alley tonight, I’ll tell you. What you were asking about Nurse Ratched isn’t relevant.”

“Okay. So you and Ruby…”

Regina sighs. “For the last time, there is no ‘me and Ruby.’ We don’t have a history, at least not a pleasant one like you’re implying.”

“Then why did she seem so quick to trust you out there? And all that stuff you said to her...about knowing what it’s like to be used—”

“Let’s stick to what you first asked me, shall we? Ruby and I aren’t friends. We’ve never been friends, but she’s very aware of the treaty I put in place throughout my land. After the Hunts- After _Graham_ came into my employ, he asked in return of the job I required of him that all wolves would be free to roam in my territory. None were to be harmed or hunted.”

“So, there was sort of an understanding? Because of...of Graham?” The name comes out a little hoarse and broken. She hasn’t talked about him since the election for Sheriff and she’s certainly never talked about him with Regina. Maybe they needed to air it all out, though. One day.

“It wasn’t all his influence,” Regina explains. “I’ve always thought wolves of any kind were worthy of protection, even the ones trying to take me down.”

Emma frowns. “Why?”

“You saw her tonight, didn’t you?”

Emma nods.

Regina either sees it out of the corner of her eye or the question is rhetorical because she goes on to say, “She’s magnificent in that state, isn’t she? Majestic. Fierce. But also vulnerable. On guard and unguarded at the same time. Such captivating, and useful, creatures shouldn’t be hurt or killed or _made_ to kill. They’re innocent. Like a horse or a unicorn. Wolves don’t harm until provoked.”

“But _she’s_ not just some wolf. She’s also—”

“Yes,” Regina responds confidently and with an almost proud smile before Emma can finish her sentence. “She’s remarkable that way. A natural fighter in both forms, but she’s also not a killer. She _has_ killed, of course, but she doesn’t enjoy it.”

“And you’re saying you relate to that? Bullshit, Regina.”

Regina glares at her. “I never said I didn’t enjoy killing. I never really did, though, to be clear. It was a means to an end. Now, torture. _That_ I enjoyed. I didn’t always, but...that’s not a story I’m likely to share. Ever.”

Emma deflates a little at that. “We’ll never get anywhere if you—”

“We don’t need to get anywhere, Miss Swan. All you need to know for this...co-parenting to work is that I’m not who I once was, and I won’t hurt Henry. Not on purpose, anyway. I’ve already hurt and failed him in other ways, unfortunately.”

“Guess it must be really reassuring to know you’re not the only one then,” Emma mumbles.

“It doesn’t feel as satisfactory as you’d think,” Regina confesses.

Emma looks at Regina with wide eyes and a slack jaw, but the brunette doesn’t acknowledge her. Not even when she turns away from the window and looks at Emma.

Instead, Regina tells her, “I just realized I have somewhere I need to go. If you stay, you should give Ruby some space. If she needs your hand to hold or shoulder to cry on, give it to her, but she’s still reeling from everything.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Emma quietly replies with her eyes on Ruby.

Ruby’s eyes are on Regina, which leads Emma to follow her gaze to the older brunette as well. She watches Regina nod at Ruby like some unspoken goodbye before she slides her purse from her forearm to her shoulder as she starts to make her exit.

Emma waits until Regina rounds a corner and disappears from her line of sight before she turns back to the hospital room. Ruby’s hunched over in the bedside chair with her shoulders tense and her head down, which draws the blonde inside the room instead of running back to Henry just yet. The sound of the door opening gets Ruby to look up but neither of them say a word. They lock eyes for a moment, just long enough for Emma to assure her friend she’s here if she needs anything, and then Ruby drops her head again.

Emma makes herself as comfortable as possible leaning against the wall facing Billy and stays with Ruby for almost an hour in complete silence. She stands there for moral support while Ruby sits, waiting for any changes in Billy’s medical status, but he remains stable and unconscious on a respirator. Gauze covers most of his arms. Someone’s pulled the blanket on his bed up to his chest where Emma spots more gauze peeking out from beneath Billy’s gown where she assumes the gaze wraps around his entire torso. When she’d seen him in the dumpster and thought he was already dead, he’d looked _bad_. Under the fluorescent lights and hooked up to multiple machines, he looks surprisingly worse.

“What if he doesn’t wake up?”

Ruby’s voice is unexpected and gravelly. Emma jumps a little and hastily turns her attention to her friend. “Like Regina said, this isn’t your fault,” she carefully replies.

“Those are my claw and bite marks all over him, Emma.” She hears the tears just as much as she sees them in Ruby’s eyes before the woman adds, “George might have commanded me, but I still did that to him. I don’t even remember it! It’s just like the first time I shifted in the Enchanted Forest. I didn’t have control then either, which is why it was all a blur. But now…now I lost control again and that’s—”

“Not your fault,” Emma firmly repeats Regina’s words from the alley and pushes off the wall. She walks over to Ruby and says, “You learned to control yourself during the full moon before the curse. Twenty-eight years is a long time for the wolf to lay dormant and you’re just rusty.”

“Don’t say that like this isn’t a big deal,” Ruby tells her with a watery but stern voice. “And if you think Regina’s to blame because she cast the curse, it’s because of her curse I spent those twenty-eight years without the memory of killing my boyfriend and didn’t have to worry about losing control from one month to the next.”

Emma blinks and almost takes a step back. Ruby’s words hit her like a heavy gust of wind. “I didn’t know that.”

“I know you didn’t,” Ruby quietly replies. “That’s kind of the point, Em. You know _Ruby_. You don’t know Red.”

“Well, maybe you can tell me sometime.”

Ruby sighs and tucks her head into her hands. “All I keep thinking is how I did this. Again. I killed someone who was nothing but nice to me.”

“He’s still breathing, Ruby,” Emma softly reminds her.

“Not on his own!” Ruby motions to the machines. Her head stays out of her hands after that as she informs Emma, “He was breathing but he wasn’t responsive when they brought him in. He was in that dumpster for hours before you got to him. He hasn’t woken up for even a few seconds. And Whale hasn’t been in to check on him since he stabilized. Stabilized but still critical. I think the only thing that _might_ save him is magic, but we can’t exactly do that when we’re trying to hide that stuff. And I wouldn’t ask that of Regina. I can’t. Not when she promised Henry she wouldn’t.”

“I’m sure he’d understand if she used her magic to save someone,” Emma reassures her. “And I can keep the feds occupied while she does her thing.”

Ruby shakes her head. “You weren’t here. Regina- She used magic to curse David so that he would be able to communicate with Snow in that burning room instead of Henry.”

“Yeah, but that saved us, and Henry was with her the whole time, right?”

“Snow told you about how close you two were to not making it out of that well, right? Because I told her and I’m sure she let you know Regina’s involvement in that.”

“Okay, yeah, that wasn’t so noble.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was also the second time she broke her promise to Henry. That time, she did it behind his back. She fixed her mistake by undoing what she started with Rumple, but she still did it. You ask her to use magic once and she’ll backslide. It’s the same fear I have during the full moon. Even when I have control, there’s no telling when or what might change that.”

“So…then, we wait,” Emma says before looking from Ruby to Billy. She stares at him for just a moment and then returns her focus to Ruby. “Don’t count him out just yet. He survived those long hours between the attack and being found. He might have just enough left in him to pull through this.”

“I hope you’re right,” Ruby somberly replies with her suddenly unfocused gaze directed at Billy.

Emma stands awkwardly at her side for another minute in equally awkward silence, at least for Emma. She’s not sure what to say or if she should leave, but Ruby offers her an out.

“I’m gonna be here a while. You should go home. Henry needs you, too, you know.”

“Yeah,” Emma croaks out. She clears her throat and says, “I’m a phone call or text away. Don’t hesitate.”

“I know.”

“I’ll swing by later, okay?”

Ruby just nods then, and Emma knows there’s nothing more she can give her friend for now except time.


	8. Chapter 8

“Be careful,” Emma warns with a smile as she watches Henry throw on his coat. “It’s cold and a little wet out there from last night’s drizzle.”

“And it’s not gonna stop there,” David reminds them both as he approaches, adjusting his own coat over his frame. “I’ll look out for him, and he’s gettin’ pretty good at stable-hand life. Guess it’s only natural when you’re the grandson of a shepherd. Right, Henry?”

David ruffles his hair, which makes Henry grimace before he hastily brushes a hand to fix the mess. Emma, however, smiles brighter at the sight.

“Just like doing that must be genetic,” Henry grumbles.

Emma chuckles and David outright laughs before looking up at her. “It’ll be fine. Besides, he’s not riding yet. He’s just gonna muck the stall and take care of his horse. When he does ride, you’ll have an open invitation to watch him yourself. Make sure he doesn’t break a bone or anything.”

Emma’s eyes widen as she shakes her head. She clenches her jaw soon after when she sees amusement flickering in David’s eyes, showing that he actually meant it as a joke. One she definitely doesn’t find funny.

“Smooth, Grandpa,” Henry sarcastically says. “Now she’ll never let me on my noble steed.”

“Hey now,” Emma quickly corrects him. “I’m the cool mom, remember? Regina would be the one to talk you out of something dangerous.”

“Actually, this is the one so-called dangerous thing Regina might let him do,” David says.

“What? No. No way she lets her kid get up on some big ass creature that can’t even see straight,” Emma argues.

The loud sound of clattering dishes pulls everyone’s attention to the kitchen where Mary Margaret’s cleaning up after their Saturday morning family breakfast. The schoolteacher looks frazzled and the way she closes her eyes and hesitates before trying to finish scrubbing the plate she’d dropped onto a pile of others in the sink gives her away.

“Uh,” David quiets down and steps closer as he adds, “yeah, she was, um, really good with horses. She- That’s...kinda how your mother met her.”

“Didn’t you read the book?” Henry looks up at her with this tired expression that reminds her so much of Regina. And Henry might be the woman’s kid, so it makes sense to see her reflected in his expressions, but Emma’s starting to feel like she sees Regina wherever she goes.

“I-I read most of it,” Emma stammers before she shifts gears. “Come on, Kid. You’re wasting precious daylight. Let’s go.”

She claps a hand on his shoulder and starts to usher him out with David close behind and smiling at her, highly entertained.

“Bye,” David quietly says to her on his way out the door. He’s close enough to kiss the top of her head if he wants, but he doesn’t. Then, he promises, “We’ll be safe.”

She watches them go and doesn’t turn around right away after the door shuts behind them. Instead, she stares at the chipped white wood until there’s one final clang in the kitchen and Mary Margaret speaks.

“You and David…” the pixie haired woman shakes her head and wears a twisted, and slightly bratty, expression as she dries her hands.

She walks around the kitchen counter but stops at the edge where she braces herself against it with one hand. The other goes to her hip as she cocks it and rests most of her weight on one foot. It’s the spitting image of all the strict or disappointed moms in the movies before they lecture, and sometimes ground, their kids. Except nothing more than a few huffs escape her after those two words and, frustratingly, it prompts Emma to steer the conversation.

“Me and David what?”

“You’re talking about Regina so casually, like she’s a part of this family.”

Emma loudly sighs. Even to herself, she sounds like a teen with an attitude, but she’s already had this conversation with Mary Margaret. At least, she thought she had. Tiredly, she’s repeats herself when she explains, “She’s Henry’s family and that’s enough.”

“Not to me it isn’t. I know you’re giving her a second chance, but this is all just happening a little too fast, don’t you think?”

“Oh, you mean like finding out my parents are Snow White and Prince Charming? And that they sent me through this magical freaking tree so I could one day find my way to some hidden away town to save them and all their friends? Wait, not all of them are friends. Some of them aren’t even from your kingdom, right?”

Mary Margaret sighs then, although not as audibly. It’s in the way she pushes herself away from the counter and starts gesturing stiffly but vigorously while she speaks that exposes her true emotions. As if her almost shrill words weren’t enough to get her point across. “And yet you’re awfully accepting of Regina when you know who she is and what she’s done. We’re your parents, Emma.”

“Yeah, well, Regina doesn’t force me to accept anything. She doesn’t look at me like she hopes I’ll just wake up one day and see her differently.”

“Because you don’t see her. You’re still stuck on believing the best in her and...it reminded me of myself, so I thought it could be a good thing. But you’re only going to get hurt.”

“Seriously?” Emma starts pacing. She can’t stand still anymore, can’t be still at all. “She saved your best friend’s life last night! I think you should be thanking her.”

“Please. She’s earning brownie points with you and Henry. Can’t you see she’s manipulating you into letting her spend more time with him?”

“If that’s all she wanted to do, she didn’t have to take Ruby to the hospital to see Billy last night.”

Mary Margaret’s face falls. “What?”

“She also didn’t have to stand outside his room for who knows how long for moral support while still giving Ruby her space.”

Mary Margaret hesitates. Her expression remains sad for a few more seconds before she sucks in a deep breath and her assuredness returns. “I just want what’s best for you.”

“And I want what’s best for Henry.”

“You really think Regina’s what’s best?”

“She’s been his mother for the last ten years. He’s been fed, clothed, cared for and sheltered. Things are dicey right now, but you can’t erase those ten years or the twenty-eight years _I_ spent alone. So maybe I get hurt. Maybe she fucks up again. But maybe she and I can make this work for Henry.”

“He doesn’t want to see her,” Mary Margaret immaturely snaps. Emma’s surprised she doesn’t defensively cross her arms over her chest and look away.

“He just needs time. I need time.”

Mary Margaret’s chin wobbles a little and then she looks away after all. “She’s the reason for that. I thought that’s something we’d agreed on in the forest.”

“She’s definitely one reason for what happened,” Emma carefully says and just as carefully starts to approach the other woman. “She wasn’t the only one to make a decision that night. And we both know your feud and her plans for the curse came about long before my date of birth.”

“She has a hell of a poker face, Emma. I don’t want you to waste as much time as I did being lulled into a false sense of friendship.”

Emma laughs. “Believe me, that’s not what’s happening.”

“Well, George may have just wanted to stage a coup, but he was right. You defend Regina a lot. She can stand up for herself, you know.”

“Hasn’t she been doing that long enough?”

“She brought it on herself, and it’s not like anyone’s questioned or fought her in the last three decades.”

“Do you even hear yourself? I thought you were supposed to be a graceful leader,” Emma says with a sour expression.

Mary Margaret closes her eyes and presses her fingers into her forehead for a moment, agitated. “I think… I think I need time with all of this.”

“All of what?”

Mary Margaret drops her hand back to her side with a light but audible slap to her clothed outer thigh and answers, “In the last week, you’ve haven’t spent a day apart from her.”

“Yeah, because the FBI—”

“The FBI is here. Yes, honey, I know. They’re here for some man in Regina’s past that hasn’t even shown his face since they lost track of him. Is that enough reason to align yourself so closely with her?”

“No one else is gonna do it.”

“Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know about her?”

“No, but it says a lot about everyone else. Listen, I really don’t want to talk about this. Again.”

“You never do.”

Emma huffs and puts her hands on her hips as she spins away for a second and then turns back around to face the other woman. “What’s the point of having this conversation, Mary Margaret? You think she’s so terrible but look at what she’s done lately. She’s respected the boundaries Henry and I have set, she walked through a crowd of people who probably want to see her humiliated at the very least to do me and, I guess, Ruby a favor. And, come to think of it, I don’t remember her picking fights with you recently. Not when she came here to take Henry to school and not even at her office, which you wrongfully kicked her out of.”

“Wrongfully? Who’s side are you on?”

Emma grinds her teeth for a moment before she replies, “Henry’s.”

“I just think maybe you should distance yourself from her a little bit. It doesn’t… People are talking.”

“About me or about you?”

“Both! But you should be concerned either way. George got under people’s skin yesterday. Some of them still don’t think Ruby should be roaming free, but they’re afraid now more than ever that either Regina will snuff them out for that or that you’ll throw them in a padded cell without a second thought.”

“We don’t have enough jail cells at the station,” Emma flatly states, “and with Mulder and Scully around to hear all the things he said about Ruby, I couldn’t just own up to the fact that he was right about her being more than human.”

“I suppose not, but you’re not helping any of us when it comes to calming the townspeople.”

“Well, that sucks for them.”

“Emma, you can’t just dismiss this. Back home, they looked up to us. They still expect us to rule as justly and swiftly with their best interests in mind.”

“The Forest isn’t my home, I don’t live by the restrictions of a monarchy and ruling justly would mean you wouldn’t be so quick to judge Regina for her past crimes.”

“She needs to answer for them,” Mary Margaret argues a little gruffly.

“Hold off on the firing squad, your Highness.”

Mary Margaret gasps like she’s committed a Cardinal sin and rebukes, “‘Your Majesty’ is how you refer to a queen.”

Emma stares pointedly at her and confesses, “I know.”

Mary Margaret balks. “Then why…?” Realization seems to dawn on her and the other woman hedges, “Have you ever called _her_ that?”

Emma shrugs but doesn’t otherwise admit to or deny anything.

Her one-time friend looks seconds away from throwing up, even as she shakes her head and attempts to express a few words that only come out as strangled and unintelligent sounds. After a good ten seconds, Mary Margaret manages to open her eyes and look directly and sharply at Emma as she says, “You need to go.”

Emma swallows. She feels her throat bob painfully from the dryness and the emotional lump stuck in her windpipe but doesn’t show how Mary Margaret’s words dig at her. “Fine by me,” she replies, still angry despite the hurt she feels simmering under the surface. She doesn’t waste another minute in the apartment and grabs her sheriff’s department windbreaker off the back of a kitchen chair before she leaves.

She slams the door on her way out and hears it rattle in the frame but doesn’t look back and apologize through the weathered wood. She holds back tears all the way down the stairs as she pulls her black knit hat out of one of the jacket pockets and slips it over her head. The chilly, autumn morning air hits her nose and cheeks as soon as she steps outside the building. It bites, but not nearly as much as hearing her mother excuse her from the apartment.

Thinking about it, hearing the tense words “you need to go” paired with the more than disappointed expression, Emma puffs out a heavy breath that passes her lips in a thin white cloud. So much for being put first, she thinks. That’s what this woman, who so badly wants Emma to accept her as her mother, had told her only days ago in another realm. One newly yet consistent point of contention and the woman kicks her out like Emma’s too much, or maybe not enough.

Emma blinks and a couple tears slip down her cheeks. She wipes at them quickly and jogs to her car. She hastily starts it, doesn’t wait more than twenty seconds before she puts it in gear and warms up the engine in record time as she all but races to the hospital.

* * *

She visits Ruby in Billy's room for all of about thirty minutes before she hears an increasingly loud commotion in the hall. Emma and Ruby share a look, brows scrunched in silent question, before the blonde hurries to the door and peeks out just in time to see a group of white coat and scrub-adorned people alike wheeling in a limp figure on a gurney.

They rush past the hallway leading to Billy's room, which isn't far from the hall leading to the elevator, and Emma catches a glimpse of blood and wild blond hair. She squints and thinks aloud, “Whale?” before she sees someone unmistakable chasing after the groaning patient and his caretakers. Emma relaxes her brow only to widen her eyes in disbelief at the scene before her and then looks back at Ruby.

“I'm gonna go check on all that,” she says as she motions to the now empty hallway that Ruby can't even see from her place at Billy's bedside.

Emma barely waits for Ruby's nod of acceptance before she slips out and rushes after the action. She catches up to Regina just as the assumed professionals cart the man she's more confident really _is_ Whale behind a set of automatic doors to the surgical wing.

“What's going on?” The question comes out a little frantic and breathless as she stops just a step behind the brunette who stares at the electronically closing doors for a long moment. “Regina?”

She doesn't touch the brunette and, in fact, resists the urge to reach out at all. She does, however, take a step toward Regina and pokes her head into the older woman’s sightline.

Regina looks like she's seen a ghost. She's a little pale and hasn't looked away from the doorway leading to the operating rooms. Her eyes are also wider than Emma's ever remembered seeing them.

“Hey,” Emma prods carefully. That time she does reach out for Regina, but she only taps a couple fingers against the woman's forearm and pulls away before she asks a new question. “What are you doing here?”

“He did it,” the brunette replies, not much louder than a whisper. Emma thinks she hears either reverence or disbelief, maybe both, in Regina’s voice.

“Who? Whale?” Emma notes an almost imperceptible nod from Regina and follows up with, “What did he do?”

Regina stops responding. Wide, brown eyes remain focused on the now closed doors that separate them from whatever’s happening with Dr. Whale. Emma almost thinks the other woman wants to forego protocol and march in there to finish a conversation Regina didn’t get to finish with the guy, but she dismisses that idea almost as easily as Mary Margaret had dismissed her.

And then she realizes Regina’s not moving. The usually empowered woman stands as still as a statue with a hand pressed against her stomach while she keeps the other hand balled in a tight fist at her side.

“Regina, talk to me,” Emma implores. She’s a little harsh when addressing the other woman, but her tone softens as she asserts her short and simple command.

Regina doesn’t even react. The mayor doesn’t flutter her lashes or tremble like she’s been startled, but she’s noticeably tense. For someone who sounds impressed about whatever Dr. Whale did, Regina certainly doesn’t seem eager to face whatever revelation she’s recently made.

“Regina!”

Finally, the woman whips her head to the side and looks at Emma. Unfortunately, she’s not the only one. A female employee in the hallway stares at her curiously as though considering if Emma should join Spencer in the basement or if she should at the very least respect the same rules she would at a library and quiet down. She sighs and returns her attention to Regina without an apology or snapped out response to the hint of judgement she feels coming off the near-platinum blonde stranger.

“What happened? Why were you following Whale?”

Regina continues to make eye contact with Emma but doesn’t answer right away. There’s a long pause between Emma’s question and what the brunette deems is sufficient information. “I wasn’t. I…I went looking for him. I saw...I-I wasn’t sure, so I had to find Whale. And now…!”

“Try that again with full sentences,” Emma instructs with a crinkled brow. She feels the lines around her eyes and above the bridge of her nose etch themselves a little deeper into her skin. This town and all its fairytale drama only seems good for adding years to her already tiring life.

Regina takes a breath. After a quick but loaded exhale, she stares deeply into Emma’s eyes like she’s only now seeing her. Really seeing her standing no more than a step away. “Whale told me it was impossible. He failed in the- the other place and convinced me that if he couldn’t do it that it could never be achieved. But he did it.”

“Okay, maybe I should have been clearer than just asking for full sentences. What couldn’t Whale do?”

“Revive him.”

Emma closes her eyes and just barely refrains from smacking herself in the face. When she meets Regina’s eyes again, she says, “Whale couldn’t revive...some other person?”

Regina narrows her eyes and looks like she’s about ready to curse Emma, or maybe even just hex her in some frivolous but exhausting way, and says, “Not just ‘some other person.’ Someone important. Someone...long gone and thought to be lost forever. But he’s back. Whale brought him back! I have to find him. I need to see him!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Emma stops Regina by blocking the brunette when she tries to sprint toward the elevator and gently grabs the woman by the shoulders. “Back as in back from the dead? That’s...not possible. He’s a doctor, not a wizard.”

“Warlock,” Regina absentmindedly corrects, her eyes drawn to her obstructed escape route. “Male witches are called warlocks.”

“Whatever,” Emma replies moodily. “He doesn’t have magic, so how the hell did he necromance this other person out of their grave?”

“Magic does much, but it can’t reverse the laws of nature. Dead is dead,” Regina explains with audible and physical displays of her growing impatience. As if all this is obvious and she’s talking to an idiot.

“Well you can’t just dig someone up and shout, ‘live’ with any success either,” Emma argues.

“He found a way.” Regina almost yells, though her voice comes out deep and raspy like a growl. “If you don’t move out of my way voluntarily, I will move you myself,” the brunette threatens as she makes another attempt to pass Emma.

Emma steps in the same direction as Regina and continues to deny her exit.

Regina huffs and takes a step back. “You don’t understand! He’s out there, alone, wandering around a world he doesn’t know. He could get lost and he’s probably confused, maybe even hurt!”

“I still don’t know what the hell’s going on! There’s no way I’m letting you run off to find a- a zombie.”

She doesn’t see the slap coming until she feels her cheek start to burn from the impact. “Jesus, Regina!”

“You should thank me for not strangling you,” Regina snarls before roughly shoving past the blonde.

Emma spins around and nips at Regina’s heels. “Alright, so I obviously struck a nerve. Who do you think Whale brought back?”

“Not that you deserve to know,” Regina hotly explains on their way to the elevator, “but he’s someone from my past.”

“So he could want to kill you like the rest of the baseball bat and pitchfork carrying mob members that have gunned for you twice in the last six weeks?”

“Contrary to what you believe, not everyone wants me dead.” Then, she fondly defends the mystery guy. “He would never hurt me. He’s… His name is Daniel and he’s the kindest soul I’ve ever known.”

“Kindest soul you knew,” Emma points out as they walk into the elevator with no witnesses to whatever agonizing death Regina wishes to inflict on her, as indicated by the murderous glare directed at her when the doors close. Emma raises her hands in surrender.

“I guess Whale took one of my hearts after he wrongfully accused me of knowing how to get back to his brother last night,” Regina informs her.

“ _One_ of your hearts?”

“From my vault,” Regina casually supplies.

“Wait, you have a collection of hearts in your vault?!”

The elevator pings and the doors open to the parking garage. They step out in tandem before Regina simply says, “Yes.”

“Okay, we are so gonna revisit that subject,” Emma tells her as she follows the brunette to the Mercedes. “After you tell me where we’re going.”

“I’m going to find Daniel. I don’t know where the hell you’re going.”

“With you,” Emma answers seriously.

Regina laughs mockingly at her. “I don’t think so. He’s my- You’re not coming.”

“The hell I’m not. You just admitted that Whale performed some kind of creepy ass—well, I wouldn’t call it a miracle—ritual or something. And there’s a guy out there walking around years after he’s been in the ground—”

“Like the hearts, Daniel was also in my vault.”

“Wha- Is there anything you don’t keep in there?” Emma heavily sighs and moves on. “So, Whale resurrected this guy from a coffin- sarcophagus?”

“Coffin,” Regina fills in for her. “Glass.”

“Like the one Snow was in when David freed her from your sleeping curse?”

“Yes, like that one,” Regina unhappily mutters. She lightens her tone when she adds, “I used a preservation spell on his body, even after Whale’s first attempt in the other land failed. Now, I’m glad I did.”

“Wow. This- Daniel,” she respectfully decides to use his name, “must have been pretty significant in your life.”

Regina’s silent even before she freezes with her hand on the car door, ready to open it and drive off to only the brunette knows where. “Very,” the woman croaks out before she moves forward again and gets into the car.

Emma walks around the trunk and internally thanks Regina when she pulls open the unlocked passenger door without resistance. “Right. So, Whale did his thing and you think Daniel’s...walking around aimlessly?”

“No.” Regina scrunches her face as she stares, more like looks through, a spot inside her car and loses herself in her thoughts. Thankfully for Emma, she contemplates her theory aloud. “I think it’s like...when David woke up from his coma. I think he’s following his final thoughts. To where he last met me.” Eyes shining with hope and unshed tears, Regina locks onto Emma. “The stables.”

Emma’s heart sinks and, suddenly, something clicks in her mind. “Did Whale… Is Daniel the reason Whale’s in surgery right now?”

Regina exhales and looks away, stops herself in the middle of shaking her head. It’s enough confirmation for Emma, but the older woman still answers, “I’m sure he was just scared. He’s not dangerous.”

Emma thinks she stops breathing. She can’t feel her lungs expand and her vision starts to darken at the edges. She’s not sure how long she sits stiffly beside Regina as the brunette calls her by almost every nickname given to her to no avail, but eventually she feels nails dig into her arm. She’s only vaguely aware of Regina yanking her upright when she starts leaning—no, falling—toward the passenger side door.

“Emma!”

Hearing Regina shout her first name causes her to blink, which immediately starts to clear away the tunnel vision just as she gasps for all the air she lacks. “Henry’s at the stables,” she rushes out on her next exhale.

The moment she locks eyes with Regina again, the brunette clamps her hand more securely around Emma’s arm and a purple cloud unexpectedly appears. She feels like she’s shooting toward the sky, untethered and without any safety gear, and her heart jumps right back into her chest. The second it does, her feet find the ground and everything inside her plummets from the abrupt shift. When the smoke clears, Regina lets go and Emma stumbles forward onto her knees in a patch of wet and mushy grass. She smells so many earthy things, and one of them is likely horse shit, before she dry heaves. Head bowed, she hears Regina yelling for Henry as she runs away from the blonde and toward the stables, but Emma only digs her blunt nails into the soil beneath her.

A horse whinnies with fright and it might be followed by a thump or two while Emma struggles to lift her head. She’s dizzy and can’t catch her breath, even though Henry’s life might depend on it, but then she sucks it up. She actually sucks in a heaving breath and slowly releases it as she pushes herself onto unsteady feet and briefly squeezes her eyes closed. When she opens them again, she sees David’s truck and nothing else. Regina’s gone and there’s no other physical signs of Henry or David.

Then, she hears shouting. Some of it is booming and carries—a man’s voice—and some of it comes out in a surprisingly high octave with desperation dripping from every indiscernible word. Wood rattles like Mary Margaret’s apartment door not long after that, but it sounds louder. It sounds like something, or someone, slams into it just as Emma spots a shaggy mop of brown hair dashing out of the stables.

“Emma!” Relief floods her entire being at the sound of Henry’s voice until she detects his panic as he runs at her like he’s on fire. “There’s someone in there! He’s scary and he’s with Mom!”

Emma jerks her head up from where she watches him close the remaining distance between them and stares in fear at the hauntingly quiet building in front of them. “Stay here,” she orders. “If he comes out here and you don’t see me or Regina, I want you to run. Go to Granny’s or the loft, just the first place you see with people who will keep you safe.” She stays just long enough to see Henry nod in agreement and then rushes into the stables.

Instantly, she sees David out cold not far beyond where Daniel pins Regina to a wall. She doesn’t linger long enough to assess David aside from the noticeable gash and swelling bruise on his forehead. Instead, she diverts her attention to the pair pressed against each other when she hears a grunt and someone choking.

Daniel grips Regina’s throat with one hand and stares menacingly into her pleading eyes. Only the toes of one of Regina’s boots sticks in the dirt while she scrapes the average sized heel of the other against the wall behind her. Daniel nearly lifts her from the ground with the force he uses to strangle her, which almost leads Emma to shouting at him. That is until she hears Regina gasp and gurgle, “Daniel...stop. I-it-it’s m-me.”

Emma lunges forward when he doesn’t let go but stills not one second later when it sounds like Regina uses what may be her very last breath to say, “I love you.”

Daniel leans in. From Emma’s perspective, he looks like he’s either about to kiss her or whisper something in her ear but does neither. He tips his head back, expression softer and shocked like he just realized something, and then pulls his hand away from Regina.

Regina inhales sharply and deeply as she bends at the waist and coughs. She touches a hand to where Daniel’s had held her almost fatally. The brunette turns into the wall she’d been forced against, which puts her back to Emma, and slides back a step or two.

Daniel does the same without using the wall as he stumbles away from Regina. The short distance doesn’t last long once the former queen stands up straight. “Regina,” he says, breathless and in awe. Like he’s found the eighth wonder of the world.

“Daniel,” Regina elatedly greets him as she takes a few hurried steps into his arms.

They hug for what feels like a lifetime to Emma as she stands out in the open, in plain view for Daniel to see her, watching this private moment that doesn’t involve her. Yet she goes unhindered by anyone. David remains unconscious on the ground and Daniel only seems to have eyes for Regina. So, Emma doesn’t move. She doesn’t think she could even if she tried. She’s almost paralyzed while she witnesses this delicate side to the other woman, riveted.

“I can’t believe it’s really you,” Regina says through her tears with as much pain in her words as there is relief.

Daniel emits a distressed sound, recoils and hunches over. He starts to back away from her again, crying a little before making a request. “Just stop. Stop the pain.” His soft and blue eyes look at Regina with the same amount of pleading she’d directed at him not long ago.

“How?” The brunette reaches out for him, and he all but falls into her.

“Let me go,” he begs.

Emma sees the small shake of Regina’s head before she hears the stubborn, “No. ...No, I won’t lose you again!”

For just a moment, Daniel’s quiet through whatever’s making him cringe. It only lasts long enough for Regina to tenderly cup his cheek and jawline when she makes a confession Emma immediately feels guilty for overhearing.

“Without you I’m lost.”

Daniel hisses and groans. He squeezes his eyes shut, brows crinkled intensely, and Emma thinks she sees beads of sweat shining in the overcast sunlight that illuminates the stables.

Regina clutches him tightly, fists the shoulders of his peasant-like top, places a hand on the front of his shoulder with her palm pressed against his collarbone. She tugs at his collar and cries, “Daniel, come back to me!”

“I can’t,” he sadly admits through his shallow breaths.

“But I love you,” she tells him quietly, sweetly, like a promise.

Emma’s heart aches. There’s a vulnerability now to Regina she’s never known, never seen, and the other woman wears it on sleeve like a badge of honor for this man. This man whom she loves and lost but has again, if only for this fleeting encounter.

She feels her heart shatter with Regina’s a moment later when Daniel bittersweetly encourages the opposite of what Regina evidently wants. “Then love again.”

It’s the last thing he says before he curls inward again with more sounds of twisting pain neither Emma nor Regina can see. His eyes fall to his feet as he shuffles backward. The next time they find Regina, ‘the kindest soul’ she’s ever known is gone.

Emma thinks she hears Regina whisper, “No” before Daniel lets out an animalistic sound from the back of his throat and stalks toward her like a predator. The brunette’s whole body seizes up as she takes a large breath and makes a shimmering blue shield around Daniel. Regina’s magic is the only barrier between the open hand she holds up to his and yet it appears her thumb still cradles the web of his hand.

Regina sobs just once before she waves her free hand between their bodies and Daniel disappears. It looks like his disintegrates into dust or ash and joins nature, but Emma doesn’t dwell on it. It’s not important, not in the slightest, as Regina sobs harder and louder and hugs herself. It’s not likely to provide much, if any, comfort.

During a brief pause in the heavy sobs, Emma hears a groan and quickly looks over to see David slowly waking up. He’s struggling to even prop himself up on an elbow when his eyes blearily look in Regina’s, and her, direction. Just as Emma sees him shape his mouth into whatever it is he plans to say, she darts toward him.

“David?” She feigns shock on her way across the stables now that Regina’s probably hyper aware of their presence.

Except the crying doesn’t stop. It’s quieter, but a look over her shoulder at Regina while she tugs David onto his feet reveals a heartbroken woman backing herself against the wall. Emma doubts she sees anything past her thick, wet lashes. If she does, Regina’s only looking at the ground considering how the woman tucks her chin to her chest.

“What happened?” David’s groggy question momentarily distracts her. “Henry—”

“Henry’s safe. He’s outside.” Emma looks at Regina again. The brunette slowly slides down the wall with her knees coming up toward her chest and her black skirt approaching disturbed dirt. She only allows a few glances at David after that and instructs, “Go out and check on him. Wait by the truck. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Carefully, she eases David away from where he’s slumped against her side for support. He sways a little when he’s upright on his own, which garners more than just a glance from Emma until he slowly and shakily proceeds out of the stables on his own.

Alone with Regina, she nervously licks her lips and steadily approaches the woman balled up on the ground. Regina tangles her hands in her silky and soon-to-be disheveled hair and doesn’t look up until Emma stands up close and just to the side of her.

“Go away,” Regina weakly commands, her voice raspy.

Emma crouches down beside her and waits.

Regina grits her teeth and leans toward her as she bites out, “Go. Away!”

Emma remains quiet and still.

“Leave!”

“Regina—”

“Don’t! Don’t you dare. You don’t know. You- …Just go!”

“Let me take you home,” Emma offers in her most soothing voice.

“Why don’t you ever listen?!” Half a second passes before Regina screams with abandon. Right in Emma’s face. The mayor launches herself at Emma and pushes her onto her ass in the dirt while Regina gets up on her knees. She punches Emma’s shoulders with the sides of her fists. One at a time and then simultaneously. Regina only stops to cling to either side of Emma’s partially unzipped windbreaker and tugs on it a few times, shaking the blonde back and forth.

Emma takes the beating and allows Regina to jostle her, although Regina doesn’t use much force at all and the blonde restricts the amount of movement to ensure she’s not flopping one direction or the other. She’s hardly hurt and not at all disoriented. David’s head is way more scrambled than hers.

Regina cries and yells and, eventually, stops hitting and pushing Emma. She leans into Emma, who dutifully keeps her hands on either side of herself in the dirt.

Emma listens to Regina sob and whimper into her hair, her neck and directly into her ear. Emma’s sure she’ll have trouble hearing out of it for a bit after Regina’s calmed down, but she doesn’t complain. She pulls Regina closer. Keeping one hand on the ground, she wraps her other arm around Regina’s back and embraces her. She waits until Regina’s cries devolve into sniffles and stunted breaths and then repeats, “Let me take you home.”


	9. Chapter 9

Emma glances across the two-seater truck that currently accommodates four and sees Regina fiddling absentmindedly with the wool sleeve of Henry’s sweater. She grips the steering wheel tighter and wrings her hands against it as she turns onto the street to the loft.

“Why am I not driving again?”

Emma’s eyes follow the confused voice to David, who sits beside her in the non-existent middle seat. He’s squished between her and Regina while Henry graciously bears future humiliation in sitting in Regina’s lap on the far end of the pleather bench.

“You’ve been knocked out twice two days in a row,” Emma answers while focusing on the road again. "This time you bled and could barely stand by yourself. You might have a concussion. You probably won’t have to ask her because she’ll do it instinctively, but let Mary Margaret know to check you over when you get inside.”

“Me?”

“You and Henry, yeah,” Emma reminds him with a frown. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“You’re not coming in,” David states with a hint of realization and disappointment.

Emma spares him a glance and then looks farther over at a near-catatonic Regina. “I’m taking her home like I just took you home.” She parks the car at the curb just in front of the apartment building but doesn’t kill the engine. She turns in her seat the tiniest bit to look at him and says, “Hope you don’t me borrowing your truck. My Bug’s at the hospital.”

David looks over at Regina as she stares blankly at the windshield. He returns his attention to Emma to tell her, “Good plan. Just try not to dent this beauty, alright?”

Emma chuckles. “I think a few dings and scratches might give this old thing some character.”

“Hey,” David feigns upset and points a finger warningly at her. “She’s not some old thing. She’s reliable and tough...and I don’t think we have newer vehicles on sale here anyway, so she’s all I got.”

“You have a name for her, too?” She’s teasing, of course, but her smile falls when she sees David light up in that annoyingly amused at the worst time kind of way.

“Amber. Like the paint job.”

“Uh, you wish this truck was amber. It’s brown.”

David shrugs and continues to smile. “Yeah, but there aren’t any good names for that.”

“You could always call her ‘Rusty’,” Emma playfully suggests.

David shakes his head while he laughs and then shifts like he’s going to get out, but he stops when Regina remains immobile. The brunette’s still staring through the windshield as though waiting for something to happen.

Or waiting for someone to appear.

Emma sighs and releases her seatbelt. She gets out of the truck and holds the door open for David who slides out soon after her.

Henry’s slow to leave and hesitates with his legs dangling over the edge of the driver’s seat. He looks back at Regina who doesn’t react at all to his movements and then bows his head as he faces forward again.

Emma steps forward and sets a hand on his shoulder just a second before he jumps down from the seat. He sulks between the truck and the few steps it takes him to reach David, so she stays close even after he walks ahead of her and out of her reach. It leads her to crouch in front of him, running her hands down both his arms and then comfortingly squeezing them. “I’m gonna stay with her, okay? She won’t be alone.”

Henry nods but doesn’t lift his head.

“It’s just for tonight,” she promises. Nothing changes about his demeanor, so she tries something else. “And then, maybe, you can visit her tomorrow. If she’s up to it.”

That gets his attention. His sad eyes look up with a glimmer of hope in them. They don’t stay on her for very long, though, and he glances at Regina again before he asks a question Emma doesn’t expect. “What happened? Who was that man?”

“Uh,” Emma nervously looks from Henry to David. David’s eyes widen when she locks onto him and follows up with a head shake that screams: don’t look at me. Another look over her shoulder at Regina gives her the confidence to not have a real answer for him because she realizes, “That’s something for her to tell you, if she wants to talk about it.”

“Okay,” he quietly accepts.

Emma licks her lips, still nervous, and then assures him, “We’ll get her through this.”

Again, he nods. By then he’s looking at her for longer than a second or two at a time, so she doesn’t wait through another one of them before pulling him into a hug. “Love you, Kid.”

“I love you,” he tearily replies.

She hugs him a little harder for that, lets another moment pass and then let’s go. Emma wipes his dampening cheeks when she stands up. Then, her attention goes to David. He’s been watching them the whole time and looks a little sad himself, but he also looks like someone who understands.

Still, he asks, “Are you sure you don’t want to come inside for a minute? At least let Mary Margaret see for herself that you’re fine. She probably won’t believe me when I tell her, especially when I look like this.” He motions to the likely fully formed bump on his forehead and tries to smile, an attempt at levity.

Emma weakly smiles back at him and says, “She didn’t want me around earlier, so I’m sure she’ll accept whatever you tell her.”

He frowns. She doesn’t elaborate.

“Check in? Please,” David requests instead of inquiring about her statement or arguing that she shouldn’t go with Regina.

She smiles a little more freely that time and nods. “Yeah. You’ll know what’s going on.”

If only Regina would give her the same courtesy.

* * *

They don’t talk the entire ride across town. Regina doesn’t even acknowledge Emma’s presence up the pathway to the mansion and moves on autopilot as she enters the house. The brunette almost shuts the door in Emma’s face.

Luckily, Emma sticks a booted foot in the doorway and prevents herself from being locked out. She follows Regina through the mansion, watches the other woman go right for the alcohol and downs a full tumbler of cider where she stands.

Regina hunches over the dark wood cabinet with the drink tray on top for just a few seconds before she pours a second glass and finishes half of it with the same quickness as earlier.

“Regina,” she speaks tentatively and approaches the brunette the same way.

“You’re not wanted here.” Regina speaks roughly, voice strained like she smokes a pack a day.

Emma cringes with the knowledge it’s scratchy as a result of the strangulation. She slides her hands into her back pockets and makes the last long steps to reach the cabinet and says, “Good thing I’ll settle for being needed.”

“You’re not needed either,” Regina bites out, but only half the words make it out without cracking. Regina ends the sentence by clearing her throat.

Emma shrugs. “Then we can pretend.”

“No,” Regina replies coolly while keeping her back to the blonde. Then, Regina throws back the rest of the drink and goes to pour another one.

Emma’s eyebrows shoot toward her hairline when Regina sets her glass down a little too hard and turns away from the cabinet with the entire decanter. “Just like we’re not gonna pretend you’re lookin’ to get shitfaced?”

“Screw you.”

“If that’ll make you feel better…” she jokes.

Regina stops abruptly in front of Emma and swivels around on her heels to glare at her. “I just watched my fiancé die for the second time,” Regina slowly and darkly informs her. “This time by my hand.”

That confession hits Emma hard enough to slam the air out of her lungs.

“Even if I cuffed you to my headboard and made you beg for all the orgasms I would deny you,” Regina explains. “Made you scream my name until your voice gave out when I finally let you cum, fucked you against _every_ surface in this house without mercy and proved I’m the best you’ll _never_ have, it wouldn’t make me feel better. So you can go back to your parents’ apartment and quietly screw yourself. Or loudly, if having them overhear is a kink. I don’t care. Just leave. Leave my house, leave me alone, get out of my life!”

Regina walks off unsteadily with the decanter. Halfway to the study, she leans against a wall and kicks off her heels before shuffling the rest of the way in her black pantyhose.

Emma follows her, continues to watch her and joins the brunette in the study. Regina glares over a shoulder at her almost as soon as the blonde passes the threshold, but Emma just closes the door behind them. They don’t need the privacy, but it’s force of habit when she has so little of it at the apartment.

While Regina sets the decanter on the mantle and starts a fire, Emma takes the long way to the couch. She walks along the edges of the room, takes it in the way she didn’t feel comfortable that first night in Storybrooke, and snoops just a little when she peers down at the paperwork and things on the desk.

“If you’re looking to uncover all my deep, dark secrets, you won’t find them there,” Regina says just as the wood crackles with growing flames.

Emma tucks her hands in the pockets of her windbreaker and slowly walks around the far side of the couch. Standing between the coffee table and a set of cushions, she still doesn’t sit.

“Your fiancé, huh?”

“Don’t,” Regina snaps with dark eyes hyper focused on Emma.

Still, she proceeds. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Ignoring what happened isn’t going to help.”

“I’m not going to ignore it. That’s why I have my cider,” the brunette replies as she carelessly slides the large, and probably heavy—even though it’s only half full now—glass off the mantle. She stalks over to the loveseat and drops onto it in the most graceless way Emma’s ever seen her display.

“You can’t drink the problem away either. Or drown in it. Trust me.”

“I _don’t_ trust you. I don’t even _like_ you. And you want me to tell you about Daniel?” Regina scoffs and crosses her legs before she tips back the decanter. She rests it in her lap and barely lets the alcohol burn down her throat before she adds, “You want me to tell you about the most painful part of my life? The part that truly started all of this?” She motions around the room with her free hand. “Your mother’s taken enough from me. I won’t subject myself to a tell-all with her spawn.”

“Maybe you don’t want to talk about it, but you _need_ to.”

“Says who? The woman who runs?”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Emma’s tone borders on a growl, but she holds back.

“It wasn’t more than a month ago you tried to take Henry and flee in the middle of the night. Like a coward.” Regina takes another drink. “And then you jumped into the hat—”

“I pushed you out of the way! I saved your ass and you know it.”

Regina grins like provoking Emma is exactly what she wanted.

Emma lets out a wild sound from deep in her gut and resists the urge to pull at her hair. “I’m not doing this with you. You’re not gonna push me into having another conversation where I’ll just repeat myself. I’ve had enough of that already.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Regina sarcastically says with a mock pout as she sits back in the loveseat. “Are you having a rough day?”

Emma rolls her eyes and admits, “I know yours is worse. We’re not really comparing bad days, though. Are we? Because that’s a stupid game to play.”

“If I’m upsetting you, you should leave. In fact, do that anyway. Like I told you to do several times already.”

“Normally, I couldn’t get out of here fast enough when you have an attitude, but this is different.”

“This is _private_ ,” Regina corrects, and then gulps down another hefty swig of cider.

“It’s barely ten AM and you’re drinking straight out of the decanter,” Emma points out. “It’s a cry for help.”

Regina grinds her teeth and appears seconds away from tearing Emma limb to limb with only her mouth.

Emma raises her hands in surrender. “We both know that if I leave now, Henry’s only going to ask about you and I won’t have anything hopeful to tell him.”

“Then lie to him,” Regina growls.

“Yeah, because that’s worked out so well in the past.” Regina looks down at her lap, none too pleased, and Emma knows she’s struck another nerve. Emma sighs and moves on. “Look, I owe it to him to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’ll survive,” the brunette unconvincingly replies.

“Right, well, you don’t have to survive this alone.”

“You’re terrible company. If anything, you’ll make this worse.”

“Ah, but then you could yell at me and that’s progress,” Emma beams at her, hopeful and charming. Just the way that annoys Regina.

Regina rolls her eyes and tries to take another swig. Emma jumps up and reaches across the table. She snatches the decanter out of Regina’s hand, spills a little on Regina’s skirt and earns herself a gasp and look of outrage from the other woman.

Regina stands up and nearly lunges for Emma across the table with her hand reaching out for the bottle.

Emma holds it away from her, which isn’t hard, and Regina stumbles into the table. Emma hears the hiss and watches the brunette’s face screw up in pain as the blonde carefully places the decanter down on the floor beside the couch. With the alcohol safely tucked away for the moment, Emma gets up and takes Regina by the shoulders to help the other woman stand up.

“Unhand me,” Regina demands while slapping away Emma’s hands.

“Calm down,” Emma half-sighs, half-groans and continues to help Regina up. “Just...how about we hold off on the drinks for now and we can start with ice cream?”

Soon after that, Emma’s surprised to find out Regina’s already stocked her freezer with a few pints of various flavors once the brunette begrudgingly agrees to her plan. She’s also surprised that she’s able to persuade Regina to leave the study to curl up on the couch in the living room. It’s the least regal and stuffy place in the house with the most comfortable furniture that still impressively matches the interior design present throughout the rest of the mansion. That automatically makes it the best place to commiserate, at least until she digs deeper under Regina’s skin.

For now, Regina’s thrown a blanket over her stocking-clad legs and feet where she’s balled up against one side of the couch. The woman sits with her knees parallel to her torso and her feet half-tucked beneath her on the plush cushions and a pint of Rocky Road cupped in one hand between her knees and her chest.

Emma sits directly across from her on the other end of the couch. Her back, much like Regina’s, rests against the armrest while one socked foot stays on the floor. She has her other leg folded on the couch, that foot wedged into the back of one knee and the other kneecap pressed against the back cushions. Her own pint of Half Baked sits one-third devoured on the side table behind her.

“Want to watch a movie?” Emma asks with a hopeful expression, tries her best to look like a lost little puppy or whatever cute thing she can resemble that will encourage Regina to either acquiesce or finally talk.

“When in the last five minutes do you think my answer has changed, Miss Swan? Especially after the last three times I told you I have no interest in whatever meaningless entertainment you have in mind.”

“You could just say no like a normal person and move on,” Emma grumbles.

“I did,” Regina argues without her usual bark. “Yet you continue to ask me the same question. I thought perhaps a different approach might finally prompt you to desist.”

“Is that why you keep talking like a damn dictionary?”

“You wanted to stay, Miss Swan,” Regina reminds her. “This is what you get.”

“Well, if you don’t want to talk and you don’t want to watch a movie, what do you want to do?”

Regina plops the spoon back into her pint and sets it down on the floor in front of the couch. She clenches her jaw and possibly grinds her teeth in the process before she tells Emma, “I want to mourn in peace.”

Emma sighs. “I can give you space, but I’m not leaving.”

“Then you won’t really be giving me space!”

Emma stands up and motions around the room. “It’s a big house, Regina. I’ll find another room to camp out in. If you need me, shout.”

Regina glares at her, but it doesn’t burn the same way it usually does. Emma doesn’t feel much ire just then. Instead, Regina looks more like a feisty child unwilling to accept their timeout yet doesn’t have a way to fight against the punishment.

Emma controls her expression to keep it neutral and stifles any laughter she feels bubbling up as she starts to leave the room. It’s the one favor she grants Regina, especially when she deliberately locks herself in the study with Regina’s spare alcohol from the cabinet in the dining room and the decanter still abandoned beside the couch.

She stokes the dying fire in the fireplace and settles in Regina’s loveseat where she has the perfect view out the single window. She’s met with gray skies much darker than when they’d arrived at the house and a gentle pitter-patter of rain Emma can’t quite see without critically adjusting her focus.

The fire pops and crackles with maximum energy when Regina seems to finally figure out her means for reckless impairment aren’t where she normally keeps them. The brunette doesn’t bother knocking when trying to open the door fails. Instead, she pounds a fist against it and demands Emma unlock it.

“Not if all you want is the alcohol,” is the blonde’s response.

It doesn’t go over well.

“Damn it!” A series of slaps and pounding and then, “Let me in right now, Miss Swan. I’m not joking.”

“Neither am I.”

“This is my house. You will not deny me access to my own study or my own drinks!”

“I’m all for drowning your sorrows in the bottom of a bottle, but—”

“But only when it’s your sorrows apparently,” Regina yells through the door. “Open up, Savior! Or you will regret it.”

“Regina—”

“You want to act like a child? Fine. One! Two!”

“Are you really counting to three?”

“Not if you let me in. And you do _not_ want to see what happens when I get to three.”

“You want to drink until you don’t feel anything anymore? You’re going to have to tell me about him first.”

Regina emits a wild and strangled sound and then everything goes quiet for one eerie moment. In that silence, Emma notices the rain pick up. It hits the window, as well as the rest of the house, just a little harder and a decent amount faster. As the wind causes an increase in volume for the rainfall, purple smoke swirls in front of Emma.

Regina menacingly steps out of it just before the cloud dissipates, a snarl firmly in place as she reaches out as though ready to throttle Emma.

Emma jumps at the sudden flash of lightning that illuminates the fierce look in deep brown eyes. She feels Regina’s fingers brush against her neck and blurts out, “You never said three.”

Regina’s hands slip down to her shoulders during Emma’s stupid attempt to stop the other woman with lame logic and then Emma’s shoved aside not two seconds before thunder cracks and rumbles across the once-again darkened sky.

Emma hits the wall next to the fireplace and watches Regina bend over to retrieve her cider. “You used magic,” she states.

“How astute, Sheriff Obvious,” comes Regina’s smartass reply.

“You really can’t help yourself, can you? Even though you promised Henry.”

“All I did was transport myself,” Regina says dismissively. “You’re lucky I pushed you with just my hands and nothing more.”

“I’m sure you think I’m lucky when it comes to a lot of things,” Emma says, but she stares wide-eyed at the woman in front of her just as Regina starts sipping at the decanter again. “You’re an addict.”

Regina pulls the decanter away from her lips and scowls at Emma while swallowing. “I’m not an alcoholic.”

Emma shakes her head and elaborates, “Addicted to _magic_.”

Regina faces Emma with the decanter still lowered but tightly in her grasp. Face twisted in disagreement and rekindled anger, Regina replies, “I am not addicted.”

“Then why did you poof in here at all? You could have stayed on the other side of the door.”

“Oh, please. Don’t tell me that was a test to see if I’d actually barge in like this.”

“It wasn’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that you did. You could use your magic to heal Billy, make his recovery a little shorter and less painful. But Ruby won’t ask, and I agreed with her reason for that. Seeing you like this? Using it just to drink away your own emotional pain?”

Regina scoffs. “Don’t get high and mighty on me, Miss Swan. Your ugly parentage is starting to show.”

“You need help, Regina,” she says almost pleadingly.

“Not from you,” Regina fires back without hesitation.

“Yeah, well, I might not be all that equipped for what you need to work on anyway. I think you should schedule weekly appointments with Archie, not just the sporadic visits you have now.”

“I see that bug enough as it is. And you already know I was just in his office last night before Whale…”

Emma squints, looks specifically for the ticks Regina can’t hide when she trails off, and sees the woman slowly start to crumble again. She stays quiet this time, doesn’t push or probe and lets Regina open up in her own time because the mayor’s carefully constructed—now overloaded—dam is about to break.

Another flash of lightning splits the sky. Thunder follows with a slight delay as it did before and, as it roars and groans around them, Regina sets the decanter on the desk before falling onto the edge of it. She looks defeated as she stares blankly at the floor in front of her feet. Just when it sounds like the thunder circles back around to them, from a boom to a diminuendo and back to a less powerful crescendo, Emma detects tears.

“I used magic,” Regina confesses sadly.

Emma nods even though Regina’s still not looking at her and continues to refrain from speaking.

“On Daniel,” Regina clarifies. “I used magic on Daniel to end his suffering, but I... I never wanted to- He wasn’t supposed to get hurt. I- I killed him.”

Emma desperately wants to deny that, to defend Regina, but she worries Regina will stop the second she remembers she’s not alone.

“If I’d never loved him, he would have had a life. He’s died twice now just because he knew me. ...I’m more poisonous than a sleeping curse.”

The rain beats down against the window even harder—the first real storm of the season—and Emma can’t helplessly watch the breakdown anymore.

“I’m sure he never regretted a single moment with you,” she says softly before taking a small step toward Regina.

Sad, heartbroken brown eyes snap up and Regina self-deprecatingly laughs. “He’d fear me if he knew all the things I’d done since he’s been gone.” Regina barely looks at Emma once she starts talking. “I swore I’d never be like my mother, especially after she- ...But I became just like her.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Please. You’re one of the first people who knows from experience I am. Everything with Henry…”

“I don’t know much about Cora, but I know you. You’ll admit when you’re wrong. It takes you a while to accept it sometimes, but you fix your mistakes. And you’re not forcing Henry to be a prince or a king, even though you dote on him like he is one, and that’s something.”

“Well, technically, he _is_ a prince. Twice over.” Then, Regina looks up again. She looks smaller than ever and small isn’t something Regina’s ever been. Not to Emma, not in front of Emma. Not until now.

With the brunette’s attention on that thread, Emma pulls on it with another attempted joke that’s hopefully safer than her last. “I hope you don’t remind him of that. We really don’t need that going to his head. Do you want to spend his teen years dealing with a moody and entitled little shit? Because I don’t.”

Regina chuckles, but the sound gets stuck in her throat and her eyes don’t shine.

Emma waits a few seconds and then carefully asks, “So, you don’t want to talk about what happened and you’re really adamant about not watching a movie. What do you want to do?”

Regina just stares at her for a long while. The rain’s the only thing to fill the heavy silence between them until, “Watch whatever you like. You don’t have to sit still and stare at the wall just because that’s all I want to do right now.”

“Wow.” Emma blinks and then scrutinizes the other woman when she says, “Who are you and what have you done with Regina Mills?”

Regina rolls her eyes. “Stop,” she half-heartedly commands.

“Regina,” she says seriously and takes another step closer, “if you want to just sit and stare at a wall, we’ll sit and stare at a wall.”

“We? I’d like to see you try to be still for even five minutes, Miss Swan.”

“Is that a challenge? Are we placing bets? ‘Cause I gotta tell ya, Madam Mayor, there’s no telling what I’m capable of when I’m motivated.” She flashes a quick but bright smile.

Regina looks annoyed, but amazingly—thankfully—not upset.

“Come on,” Emma encourages. “You wanna sit here and stare at the fire or will any ol’ painting or painting-less wall do?”

“You’re really going to just sit here with me.” It’s not a question, but Regina clearly doesn’t think Emma’s serious.

“Yep.” Emma closes the distance between them and casually settles in the desk chair right next to the other woman. “That is, if I’m welcome.”

“Hasn’t stopped you so far.”

Emma leans just the tiniest bit forward and rests a hand on the desk in the space directly behind where Regina’s perched and respectfully keeps the other hand in her lap, even though she could just as easily place it on Regina’s leg. “If you really want to sit by yourself, I really will find another room. Again.”

Regina hesitates then clears her throat. “And miss out on watching you squirm? Not a chance.”

Emma ducks her head and smiles. She nods before she looks back up at Regina and tells her, “You’re on.”


	10. Chapter 10

A light kick to her leg pulls Emma from the brink of sleep. She turns to look where Regina’s laying across half the couch with her feet almost in Emma’s lap as the blonde rests near the middle of the posh seating. The cushion behind her is too poofy and hard, much like the one beneath her, and her neck hurts from the awkward angle she’d almost slept at with her cheek pressed to her shoulder.

Regina kicks her again with a quick thump of her stocking-covered foot to Emma’s jean-covered thigh.

“Ow! Regina,” she scolds. As she rubs where Regina made impact, she looks over and sees that Regina’s asleep. Eyes closed, brow knit.

Regina appears distraught, even in her sleep. Most people might look relaxed or peaceful, but Regina’s troubled from what Emma can tell. The way Regina tosses and turns and thrashes any time her leg jerks and her foot makes contact with Emma indicates as much.

Emma shivers while she watches Regina for another moment and looks to the fire that’s all but died out. The logs don’t burn as brightly and the flames stay close to the charred wood. They’re too far away from the limited heat to really feel it and the central heating throughout the house isn’t doing much for Emma.

Carefully, she eases herself away from the brunette and ensures Regina’s feet land softly in the space she’d occupied that the woman couldn’t resist attacking. Even with her legs stretched out and full reign over the couch, Regina still squirms in her sleep. Emma watches just a little longer in case Regina accidentally throws herself off the furniture and the blonde’s shocked to see that the thrashing worsens when she’s not sitting beside the other woman. She highly doubts her absence has anything to do with it, but she won’t deny what she’s seeing.

Regina wraps her arms around herself and makes quiet, choked sounds while she curls and then straightens, curls and straightens her legs. Not one position Regina finds herself in appears comfortable enough to maintain for longer than five seconds and Emma’s worried the couch isn’t wide enough to handle the sudden and increasingly dramatic movements.

Emma walks around one side of the couch and grabs her windbreaker from where it’s draped over the back of the desk chair. She then walks around the back of the couch until she’s standing behind the armrest supporting Regina’s head before she gently settles the windbreaker over Regina like a blanket. Next stop is the fireplace where she rekindles the flames that will hopefully make things more comfortable for them both.

Just as she’s turning away from the revitalized fire, Regina groans and pushes absently at the windbreaker until the brunette cranes her neck as she blinks open her tired eyes. Regina shifts beneath Emma’s jacket and then furrows her brow in honest confusion before she looks down at it.

“What-?” If Regina has a question, she doesn’t finish saying it out loud. Instead, she stares at the jacket a little longer before craning her neck again to look at Emma.

Emma’s on her way toward the coffee table, so Regina doesn’t strain herself as much. The older woman does, however, mess up her hair as she rubs it against the armrest multiple times in her need to track Emma’s movements. Despite the added fluff and kink to brunette locks, Emma can’t find a single flaw with Regina’s appearance. Not even with the mascara streaks down her face and smudges around her eyes.

“You’re staring,” Regina informs her with a scratchy voice.

Emma sits directly in front of Regina on the coffee table and looks away before saying, “Sorry. Is the jacket okay?”

Regina glances at it like she’d forgotten it’s there and then scrunches her nose in distaste. She pushes it away from her chest and down to her hips and then shivers but pretends otherwise as she says, “How long did I sleep?”

“I don’t know,” Emma answers, looking at Regina again when she does. “Maybe twenty minutes. I was starting to drift off myself until you—”

Regina arches a brow as she waits for Emma to continue. Emma clears her throat and lets the sentence trail off into awkward silence before Regina’s impatience gets the better of the other woman.

“Until I what, Miss Swan?”

Emma nervously licks her lips and reluctantly replies, “Until you started kicking me.”

Regina sits up almost immediately but her movements are slow. The windbreaker slides into her lap and the brunette surprisingly drops her arms over it instead of throwing it off her completely.

“Bad dream?” Emma asks the question knowing Regina’s unlikely to answer and the brunette, predictably, gets defensive.

“I’m just restless. It’s been a long day and it’s barely…” Regina looks over at the clock on the mantle, squints as she reads it, and adds, “Three. In the afternoon?”

Emma looks past Regina and through the window behind her that’s still uncovered, no blinds or curtains to shield their view of outside or vice versa. “Still pretty dark out there, but yeah. Sun’s still somewhere behind those clouds.”

Regina glances over her shoulder to see what Emma sees and then collapses against the back of the couch with a sigh.

“Do you want to—”

“Talk about it? Find something else to ask me, Miss Swan. I’m tired of that question.”

“I wouldn’t have to ask it so often if you’d talk to me before I can ask,” Emma says with a shrug.

Regina sighs again and then covers her face with both hands. Emma watches her use them to rub her face tiredly like Emma might do. It feels uncharacteristic of the brunette and gives Emma more reason to worry. And then—

“It wasn’t a nightmare,” Regina offers. It immediately captures Emma’s attention and the two lock eyes as Regina adds, “I keep...replaying what I did. To Daniel.”

“What Whale did was messed up.”

“I went to him long before the curse to do exactly what he finally achieved yesterday.”

“Okay, but you saw what that achievement meant. Daniel wasn’t exactly himself, right? He attacked Whale and David. And he would have hurt Henry if the kid hadn’t been able to run out of the stables when he did.”

Regina closes her eyes, squeezes. She gulps like the truth they both know is hard to swallow, and Emma doesn’t doubt it. “He’s still… We were going to get married.” Regina’s quiet as she finally opens up, and Emma feels her heart ache for this woman all over again. “The night he died—the first time—he and I planned to run away because my mother wanted me to be queen. I only wanted him. My mother found out because _your_ mother found him and I together after I’d already been promised to her father.”

Emma shudders with Regina.

“My mother made us think she could accept Daniel and I together long enough for us to let our guards down. Daniel’s guard more than mine. He stepped up, figuratively and physically, and she took his heart…” Regina sucks in a stuttered breath like she’s about to cry again, but it seems she’s all cried out because the tears never come. “And then she crushed it. Right in front of me. His last moments were of pain. The last thing he saw was my mother’s angry face and his heart withering to dust in her hand.”

“Jesus,” Emma exhales. “I knew Cora was a piece of work, but- Wow.”

Conversation goes like that until dinnertime. Regina shares a little more about her past, enlightens Emma in few but enough words about her arranged marriage and how often she’d been manipulated in her life up until, and even after, then. By the time Regina explains her reason for callously orchestrating Leopold’s murder, Emma’s only genuine and immediate response is a firm, “Good.”

Regina blinks and sits back a little more for a brief moment. She readjusts as she says, “No one’s ever had that reaction.”

“Then everyone else doesn’t know what you just told me,” Emma replies bitterly. “Men can be such assholes. I’m even more sorry you didn’t get to run off with one who actually loved and respected you.”

Regina just stares at her after that. A long moment passes with their eyes locked and a charged silence between them.

Then, Emma's stomach rumbles loudly in the quiet room. It's not raining outside at the moment, so she can't even hide her hunger behind the storm. When Regina starts dinner, Emma's actually glad for that.

Conversation slows as the brunette prepares something that smells delicious and isn't too complicated for Emma to help make. Granted, Regina assigns her the easy jobs like chopping vegetables and stirring, but Emma considers even being allowed in the kitchen during the process a victory.

They work together in the first comfortable silence they've shared in...ever. The only communication happens through Emma's few questions about what else she can do and Regina providing instructions regardless of whether or not Emma asks anything.

When everything's distributed between two steaming plates, Emma leads them back to the comfortable couch in the living room much to Regina's protest and confusion. Emma reminds her, “You ate ice cream there. This is the same. Make yourself comfortable and just enjoy it.”

“If you drop any of that food in there,” Regina warns, but she doesn't finish the sentence with any threat or other stakes.

“Relax, your Majesty,” Emma says with a wry smile over her shoulder. She freezes for half a second before she tries to shake it off and settle on the couch, but Regina notices the jerky movement.

“Not so fond of that title anymore? Or are you worried it's inappropriate after what I've told you?”

“Little of both?” She twists her face up with discomfort and uncertainty. She’s cringing just a little because, “Today’s really not about me, though.”

“No, no. If you expect me to talk to you, you should tell me things as well. You’re not so fond of calling me by my title?”

“It’s not- I pissed off Mary Margaret and calling you that reminds me of the fight we had earlier. But now you also told me how you didn’t even overthrow anyone yourself to get the throne, so...”

“You had a fight with Snow? About titles or about me?”

“Little of both,” Emma repeats without an upward lilt in her voice or screwed up expression that time. She digs into her food, mashes a large bite into her mouth that prevents her from saying more, but a quick glance at the brunette shows her that Regina’s more focused on the conversation. Emma regrets not being as focused on it and only pushing her food around the plate like a child when she realizes too late that the meal is scorching hot.

She tries not to spit the food back out, but her eyes start to water and the roof of her mouth burns. Emma ends up looking like a child anyway while also being very unattractive in even the most platonic of senses as she opens her mouth and sucks in as she fans her face with a wildly waving hand.

“Classy,” Regina dryly says.

Emma finally swallows without hurting herself too much and then sets the plate on the coffee table before pulling her feet onto the couch and sitting cross-legged on the soft cushions. She looks more relaxed that way and decides not eat for a few minutes to avoid further embarrassment.

“Fight about me often, Miss Swan?”

Emma just stares at her the tiniest bit sharply.

Regina smirks, but her usual smugness and amusement doesn’t reach her eyes. “I’m flattered. Truly. I take it from you staying here tonight under the guise that you’re here for me means she won the argument?”

“It’s not a _guise_ ,” Emma defends herself. “And I’m not really sure who won. It wasn’t a win-lose argument. It was… She kicked me out, but I didn’t really want to be there anymore anyway. It’s...whatever. No big deal.”

“She kicked you out?” Regina sounds like a brewing storm, like there’s anger on the rise inside her on Emma’s behalf. It’s only masked, very thinly, behind Regina’s disbelief.

“It’s nothing. She’s angry. I’m fine,” Emma dismisses quickly.

“What got her so mad that she kicked her only child out of that little hovel you all share?” Regina asks with more anger at the forefront, but she seems to contain it long enough to limit the visibility of her apparent sympathy and long enough to get answers.

“She was acting so...so...high and mighty and it frustrated me, so I called her ‘your Highness’ and—”

“She sees herself as Queen,” Regina cuts in. “You referred to her as a princess.”

“I was well-aware,” Emma explains. “And when I told her I knew the difference, she told me to leave.”

Regina furrows a brow. “How does that involve me?”

Emma takes a moment, weighs her options on how to tell Regina this part, and then confesses, “She didn’t tell me to leave until after I admitted I’ve called you your Majesty in the past.”

“Not out of respect,” Regina mentions with a hint of fondness and subtlest of grins.

Emma half-scoffs, half-laughs—although the scoff has nothing to do with Regina—when she replies, “I didn’t clarify that part for her.”

Shock monopolizes Regina’s features once again and Emma only feels marginally better about the fight because of the brunette’s reaction.

“Why? Why would you let her think that… She thinks you see me as your queen!”

Emma smirks with both delectation and more self-deprecation. “I wanted to knock her down a peg. She keeps yelling about how I shouldn’t take your side over hers and I keep telling her she’s judging you based on your past, not your present. She doesn’t like hearing that, so she just repeats herself and I’m tired of it.”

“Well, it’s not like you’re really on my side anyway.”

Emma shrugs. “I’m trying to be. I definitely defend you a lot when you’re not in the room to defend yourself.”

Regina’s lips twitch like she wants to smile, but she purses her lips as quickly as the smile almost appears.

“And now you’re all caught up on my insignificant problem,” Emma dismissively says and reaches over for her food, which has thankfully cooled enough for her to enjoy a warm meal instead of a fiery one.

“It’s not insignificant,” Regina quietly says while Emma shovels forkfuls of food into her mouth in rapid succession.

Unable to speak without playing a game of see-food with Regina, Emma just looks at her with a silent question that prompts the other woman to elaborate.

“Your mother, whom you’ve only known for maybe a month, has a lot of lost time to make up for and yet she couldn’t handle one disagreement and threw you out. She’s a brat and an idiot and, clearly, that hasn’t changed in any of the years I’ve known her.”

“Um, thanks. I guess.”

“I’m just stating facts, dear,” Regina says with a casual wave of her hand like her words don’t mean anything.

For Emma, however, they heal just a little piece of her battered heart. They comfort and reassure her that she’s not wrong for being upset about what had transpired, how quickly she’d been run out of the apartment, how unwanted it made her feel for the umpteenth time in her life.

“How’s dinner?” Regina’s banal question brings Emma back to the present moment and inspires a mood change that Emma’s only too happy to stoke like the now extinguished fire in the study.

“Eat it and find out,” she cheekily replies.

Regina rolls her eyes like Emma expected she would and Emma smiles into her next bite. Then, Regina actually takes a bite—her first bite—of a dinner she’d been the most involved with making and nods in self-approval.

Emma’s smile doesn’t stretch as far across her face by then, but it’s still very much on display and feels oddly softer. It matches how her chest feels warm like it never has in Regina’s company until then. She acknowledges the feeling but ignores all its potential meaning as they eat through companionable bouts of silence and interspersed discussions.

It’s not long after they wash the dishes and leave them out to dry that they’re left with awkward goodnights. They trip over their words as Regina replaces the pristine sheets in one of the guest rooms with fresher linens from the hall closet and bump into each other in the doorway on their way out of the room.

“I’m not really tired yet,” Emma explains when Regina looks at her like the blonde’s slipping from reality for not making herself comfortable in the room Regina made up just for her. “I’ll probably stay up a little longer, find something to read or watch or...something.”

Regina nods, accepting and maybe understanding as though she’s about to do the same, before she leaves Emma to her own devices and disappears into the master bedroom.

Emma waits until she sees the main light flick off to reveal a dimmer glow from what she assumes is the bedside lamp before she ventures back down to the living room. She looks through a few books tucked into the bottom shelf of the end table beside the living room couch. A few of Henry’s comic books lay stacked between mystery novels with a romantic subplot and less fictional literary works like travel guides and historical texts. She doesn’t finish a single book, just skims through them, but she does read at least three non-sequential issues from the Marvel universe.

She’s not sure when she fell asleep, didn’t even know she had, but she’s startled awake by something hitting her in the face. She’s on guard and defensive for the first few seconds before the adrenaline fizzles out in favor of her grogginess and subsequent grumpiness.

Emma grumbles in protest and slowly opens her eyes to find a pillow on the floor and Regina standing over her with a cocked hip, crossed arms and partially amused expression. “This better be an emergency,” Emma says. “Did the psycho on the loose finally show himself?”

“Not that I’m aware,” Regina answers. “I came down for water and saw you sleeping on the couch when there’s a perfectly good bed waiting for you upstairs that I didn’t have to fix up for you if this narrow, unsupportive couch is where you’d rather rest for the night.”

“Sorry to offend you,” she snarkily responds with a small grin. “I didn’t plan to crash here. I guess I was more tired than I realized.”

“It’s a good thing I spared you from a night on that old thing, then,” Regina says while shifting _almost_ undetectably from foot to foot.

“Old? Please. I’ve slept on floors and hard, plastic chairs before. Ancient mattresses and barely there prison cots, too. This couch is luxurious,” she promises.

Regina just stands there and uncharacteristically avoids eye contact like she has something to say but doesn’t want to give voice to it.

Emma tries to make things easier for Regina by jumping past any discomfort and suggesting, “ _Now_ do you want to watch a movie? Sometimes I need the noise to help me sleep.”

“You were sleeping just fine before I came in here,” Regina says with an arched brow, and Emma knows she’s not buying Emma’s reason for offering this distraction.

“Yeah, but I don’t really feel like wasting another hour or two tiring my eyes out from reading like I did to fall asleep the first time,” Emma proceeds as planned. “Putting a movie on is faster.”

Regina considers it as she looks at Emma and then to the big screen TV across the room. Face turned away from the blonde, Regina apparently decides to use that to her advantage and turn her back completely as she walks away.

Away, but not out of the room.

Regina stops at the dark oak, almost floor to ceiling shelf for books and media against the wall between the archways leading either to the dining room or foyer. She crouches down and retrieves a large blanket from the double door cabinet beneath the shelving portion of the furniture and walks back to the couch with it draped over an arm. Emma’s surprised the woman’s not only agreeing to watch a movie with her but bringing an added comfort to the mindless activity as well. Then, there’s the shock that comes from Regina _not_ tripping over the ends of the blanket that threaten to skim across the floor with each step where they hover between hardwood and exposed ankles.

Regina unceremoniously dumps the bunched up, thick blanket into Emma’s lap—and partially onto the rest of Emma as well, her head included—before she crosses back to the shelf. “Do you have anything already in mind while I’m up?”

“Uh, I have no idea what your movie selection includes, Regina.”

Regina smirks over her shoulder for the briefest of moments and then lists off more options than Emma thought the brunette would even rent let alone own. The one unsurprising thing is the distinct lack of any Disney movies except _Lilo & Stitch _ and _The Emperor's New Groove_ , which doesn’t bother Emma in the slightest. Especially not when Regina lists several Dreamworks movies that Emma’s automatically inclined to want to binge watch until sunrise.

They don’t binge watch anything, however, and they definitely don’t stay up until sunrise. Emma’s not sure who falls asleep first, but they’re both out like a light until daylight greets them subtly through the ever-present clouds.

But the soft glow of hidden sunlight is the absolute last thing Emma notices that morning. The very first thing she notices comes in the form of wayward brunette hair tickling her nose and the press of a warm body keeping her from stretching with an elongated arch of her back. Half-laying on the couch, there’s nowhere for the body on top of her to go except the floor or the blonde’s lap should Emma move even a fraction of how much she instinctively craves to move.

Instead, Emma remains stiff and still beneath a very relaxed Regina. Huh. Maybe getting off the couch in the study earlier did have something to do with Regina’s subconscious worsening while she slept after all.

Regina’s a limp lump on top of her who doesn’t stir even a little bit. Not even when Emma peeks around the top of Regina’s head to watch her as she sleeps and gently brushes a few strands of silky locks out of the woman’s face. The brunette’s makeup no longer streaks it, washed away before she’d woken Emma a short number of hours ago in a failed attempt to move her upstairs, and Regina’s bare thigh presses against Emma’s jeans. Despite the denim barrier, the large and extremely comfortable blanket they’re cuddled under allows Emma to feel the shared body heat between them.

Then, as if Regina senses the hint of panic in Emma, the older woman shifts and curls into Emma like a temporarily affectionate cat. Regina actually knees Emma in the chest the way the brunette all but settles in Emma’s lap with her calves stretched out over the tops of the sheriff’s thighs. Regina’s ass snuggly fits against one of Emma’s outer thighs and the mayor nuzzles into the crook of Emma’s neck while her toes reach for the armrest.

It’s an interesting position to say the least and Emma doesn’t understand how it can be comfortable, but then she sees that it might not be when Regina readjusts less than a minute later.

Readjusting, however, means deeply, audibly, inhaling and lifting her arms toward the ceiling as she thrusts her chest out. Emma’s eyes drop to watch the show as the blanket falls to Regina’s waist and reveals two hardening peaks poking through the dark blue, cotton camisole. And of course the excitement ends in a grand finale with Regina moaning before she retreats from her morning stretches. The woman sleepily blinks awake while bringing one of her previously outstretched hands down to Emma’s collarbone while her free arm slides off the back of the couch to wrap Emma in an embrace.

Emma might have actually stopped breathing. She can’t tell if she’s only dreaming or has died and gone to some heavenly afterlife because there’s no way waking up like this, with Regina of all people, is real.

Until Regina shatters the peace like a sledgehammer bearing down on glass when she jolts into a more present wakefulness and stares at Emma with wide eyes.

Emma clears her throat and Regina’s not far behind in doing the same as they avert their eyes, which is when Regina notices how little a camisole does to conceal affected nipples. The blonde glances at the other woman every few seconds as Regina pulls the sides of her open robe tighter around herself.

Regina keeps her arms crossed over her chest to hold the silk robe in place and spares Emma a brief moment of eye contact before she shuffles off the couch. “I think I should start breakfast,” Regina says by way of excusing herself.

Emma keeps half the blanket from falling to the floor between the couch and coffee table in Regina’s hasty exit and pulls it around herself like a coat as she stands. She trails after Regina into the kitchen and offers her help yet again.

Regina doesn’t refuse it, but she doesn’t verbally confirm Emma’s even wanted in such close proximity to her at that moment.

Emma decides to help until Regina tells her to do otherwise and reluctantly sheds the blanket to move around the room more freely. She leaves it draped over the back of a dining room chair before she glues herself to Regina’s side and asks, “What are we making?”

“Waffles.”

“Yum,” Emma smiles. “Where do you keep the mix?”

“The mixing _bowl_ is in that cupboard over there,” Regina corrects her and points to the aforementioned place. “I make my own mix from scratch.”

“Of course you do.” Despite Emma’s initial stupefaction, she smiles again. It’s a little smug and exceedingly fond. “Okay. Help me, help you. What ingredients do you need to make the mix?”

Regina rakes her eyes over Emma from head to toe and back again with the tiniest hint of appreciation in her eyes and the smallest upward curve of her lips. Then, she ties her robe closed as though it’s an apron—like the one she’d actually bothered wearing to make dinner—and supplies Emma with step by step instructions.

Naturally, that leads to Emma standing on her tippy toes to reach a shelf above Regina that forces her torso to press and rub against Regina’s back. Emma’s shirt rides up as she drops from her toes to stand firmly on the soles of her feet again and she’s fully blushing by the time Regina turns to look at her. She tugs down her shirt by the hem using the hand not holding the flour and she quickly and nervously rushes to ask, “Why don’t I tell David to bring Henry over for breakfast? I told him it might be possible for him to see you today if you were feeling up to it.”

“Y-yes,” Regina stammers. “Please. I’d like to see him, and...if he wants to see me—”

“He does,” Emma instantly interjects. “Actually, he didn’t want to leave you yesterday, but things were… I didn’t think you’d want Henry to see you like that just as much as I thought you’d push aside your grief to cater to him. So…”

“You made the right call,” Regina assures her. “Now make another one.”

Emma flashes her a smile that Regina returns before Emma whirls around and traipes through the house in search of where she left her phone. She finds it in a pocket of her windbreaker, which still sits discarded on the couch in the study, and invites David to drive Henry over in exchange for a cup of coffee at the very least.

“David will have him here in thirty minutes,” Emma announces as she walks back into the kitchen and sets her phone on the island countertop.

“Good,” Regina replies as she keeps her eyes on the task at hand.

Emma goes to the coffee machine and brews a fresh pot for three while she engages in more small talk with the other woman. “He said they’d be over sooner if my call hadn’t woken them up. I guess they had a late night over there.”

“Mm. So did we.”

“Yeah, but Henry’s still a kid. They sleep all the time, right? And there’s no telling what David had to deal with. Mary Margaret thinks he’s also a little bit more on your side than hers.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Maybe you had more of an effect on him while Mary Margaret and I were in the forest than you thought,” Emma teases as she glides her way into Regina’s personal space and pulls the whisk to her mouth. She licks it while Regina continues to hold it, which earns her a slight shriek followed by a scoff before the brunette swats her hand away. Emma chuckles and backs off as silently requested.

It’s not until she serves Regina a cup of coffee that prompts the brunette to fully face her for the first time since they’d woken up together—and then Emma had been much too distracted by other things—that the younger woman finally notices the bruises on Regina’s neck. The brunette barely finishes saying thank you before Emma cuts her off with a gasp.

“What?” Regina takes a sip of the coffee and sets it down on the small counter space beside the stove before she flips the waffle iron on the island counter.

Emma plucks at one side of the robe and drags it away from Regina’s sternum. It makes Regina turn toward her again while also taking a step away from her, but it doesn’t prevent Emma from getting a better look at the purple handprint marring olive skin.

“You- Um, your neck. You might...want to cover that up before Henry gets here,” Emma timidly suggests.

Regina immediately tugs the robe out of Emma’s hand as she closes it around herself again and bolts from the kitchen with one hand still on the silk. The other hand gently touches where Daniel left his physical mark the previous morning. She leaves Emma alone in the kitchen long enough that the blonde finishes making the last three waffles while Regina makes herself decent.

The mood, unfortunately, doesn’t improve after that.

Henry’s presence would normally bolster Regina, but his presence also welcomes David with it. And David brings terrifying news.

Dressed in a black turtleneck, Regina greets him and Henry with a smile that spreads with love and warmth as she focuses solely on the kid. Emma, on the other hand, smiles at them with equal amounts of warmth.

Until she sees the envelop David’s squinting at in his hand as he turns it over a couple times.

As he holds it up in better light where the mostly elusive sun still illuminates the foyer through the still open front door, Emma asks, “What’s that?”

She reaches out for it as she takes a few steps closer to him and asks.

He hands it over and answers, “I don’t know. It was taped to the door.”

Emma furrows her brow. She looks up at Regina where the other woman hugs Henry like she’ll never let go. Her stomach churns and then sinks. Suddenly unsettled, she regretfully says, “It’s for you, Regina.”

Regina pulls away from Henry the smallest bit, keeps an arm around his shoulders as she turns to Emma, and encourages the blonde to open it for her.

Emma picks the lightly sealed flap open and pulls out a multicolored, braided keychain.

“No,” Regina breathes out, frightened.

Emma racks focus from the keychain to Regina and instantly notices the woman’s as white as parchment paper. “Regina?”

“He’s here,” Regina thankfully doesn’t hesitate to inform her. “Owen’s here.”

“Owen?” David asks what Emma’s thinking, and that’s apparently enough to earn him an invite for more than just coffee.

With a concerning amount of trepidation, Regina _finally_ shares the part of her twisted history that brought the FBI to their no longer sleepy little town.

“Owen Flynn,” David states when Regina finishes filling them in. “That’s Greg Mendel’s real name?”

Regina nods numbly and squeezes Henry’s hand where it rests in hers on top of the dining room table.

None of them have eaten the waffles that Emma’d brought to the table just before David and Henry’s arrival, which might be for the best because Emma’s not so sure she’s not about to throw up.

“So, the agents were right,” Emma slowly says as she stares wide-eyed at the table cloth. She pauses before she forces herself to lock eyes with Regina and ask for confirmation about what she thinks she understands. “Greg’s here looking for his dad. Because you sent him over the townline without the guy and put up that invisibility ward that the return of magic apparently blasted threw after the curse broke.”

Regina nervously licks her lips, which is a very Emma thing to do, and pairs the action with a croaked out, “Yes. I’ll admit, I’m not proud of it. It hurt even then to watch that boy crying out for his father through the barrier.”

“So, tell his father he’s here looking for him,” David states.

One look at Regina tells Emma what the brunette then says. “It’s not that simple.”

David’s face falls while Emma closes her eyes as a feeling of defeat hits her like high tide waves crashing down on themselves and the shore.

“He’s dead, isn’t he.” Henry doesn’t ask. Even the ten-year-old understands what Regina did nearly three decades ago.

Regina swallows thickly and morosely confesses through wet eyes, “Yes. I had my reasons, but there’s no excuse for what I did. I-I’m sorry, Henry.”

Slowly, he slips his hand out of Regina’s and sends the brunette reeling into ashamed sobs as she takes her hand off the table to hold herself.

However Henry might feel about what Regina’s confirmed for him, he doesn’t leave his seat beside Regina’s at the table. But he doesn’t reach out for her again either. The damage is done, but Emma thinks it’s not as irreparable as Regina might feel it is at this particular moment.


	11. Chapter 11

They manage to go three days without a magic or fairy tale related problem. Greg doesn’t leave any more envelopes or keychains. All is well and boring like it had been before the curse broke. Even Mulder and Scully, who don’t know anything about what Greg left on Regina’s door, look seconds away from falling asleep every time Emma spots them at the diner.

Not that Emma stops in too often. She doesn’t even spend longer than fifteen minutes on a break and eats her food on the go. She circles the town over and over again throughout the day every day and has David do the same. They work counterclockwise and in tandem to ensure they don’t miss anything and yet Greg Mendel still alludes them.

On top of that, Emma and David inevitably miss something. She’s not sure how, but they do. They only know they’ve failed when Regina storms into the station during one of their brief breaks to consult with each other.

“Albert Spencer,” Regina shouts as though they’re not sitting in the bullpen less than five steps away from where the brunette stops to cock a hip and glare.

“What about him?” David’s brusque but jumps to his feet, immediately guarded and ready to fight and defend should the situation require that.

“He got out,” Regina tells them. She speaks directly to David but turns her attention to Emma and locks onto it, doesn’t let go of the blonde’s gaze.

“What do you mean he got out?” Emma sits up straighter but she doesn’t stand like David.

“Nurse Ratched called to inform me that someone drugged her while her back was turned. She woke up ten minutes ago and checked on all the patients. Spencer’s the only one unaccounted for.”

“How the hell could this happen?” David shouts and starts pacing.

“Three guesses,” Emma sarcastically offers. “Okay, so we’ll head out right now and search for him. He couldn’t have gone far. And if he has help like I suspect, it’ll be easier to find two men who stand out and stand together.”

“Greg’s managed to keep himself hidden since he left that message on my front door while we slept,” Regina almost growls out. “And we all know that Spencer’s twisted, but he’s not actually insane like we led the FBI to believe. He went undetected by us until just before the mob almost killed Ruby, so I’d say two loose threats are way worse than one. _Easy_ isn’t a word that comes to mind right now.”

Regina’s right, of course. There’s nothing easy about what Spencer’s escape from the hospital means for them. Their first problem after the escape is how quickly the news spreads through town.

Within twenty minutes, Mulder and Scully approach Emma in the middle of her very public, and so far fruitless, patrol.

“Need a little help with your lost patient?” Mulder’s not smug or condescending but the question still grates on Emma’s nerves.

“Like you need help with yours?”

“Maybe he had another axe to grind,” Scully suggests. “Or maybe he had trouble getting here. We don’t know where he is or, really, what he even wants.”

“You were so convinced he’s holding a grudge against Regina a week ago. What’s changed?”

“His inactivity,” Mulder says. “He hasn’t given us any reason to think he’s even anywhere near here.”

Which is the exact moment Emma catches movement out of the corner of her eye. She feels it deep in her gut that she should turn and look, so she does. And then charges toward none other than Albert Spencer.

She refrains from calling out, drawing his attention before she can reach him, but Agent Mulder foregoes the same method and instead announces Emma’s rapidly impending approach.

“Sheriff Swan, wait!”

Emma doesn’t look back to see the agents trailing after her. All she sees is Spencer making eye contact before he flees like one of her marks from her bail bondsperson days. “Damn it,” she mutters to herself before picking up speed.

A minute later, Emma’s not sure the increased heart rate and extended steps that resemble lunges in motion are necessary. Albert Spencer is a man in either his late 50s or early 60s. He’s tall, but he has a gut from a few too many nights of overindulgence and he’s a self-aggrandizing royal from another realm with less evolved opinions and standards. He’s also lost his stride, if he ever really tried to have one.

She tackles him and it’s the first, and last, easy thing to happen for a while.

* * *

Dropping Spencer off with Nurse Ratched feels a lot like déjà vu when the agents shadow her the entire time. Except Spencer smirks at her like he knows something she doesn’t, like he’s better off than she is despite being stuck in the psych ward indefinitely and not likely to make a second escape.

It’s then, when she locks him inside the greenish and depressing room, that her phone rings. She doesn’t realize the time until she answers what caller ID informs her is a connection to Regina, but the current time is the last thing on her mind when the brunette immediately yells through the phone.

“Henry’s gone!”

Emma braces herself with a hand against the wall beside Spencer’s door as her legs almost give out. Her breathing becomes shallow and her eyes are still on Spencer through the small, square window that looks into his room. He hasn’t looked away and his smirk appears twice the size as it had been before the call. Emma can only guess as to why. Instead—

She turns and fast-walks away from the room as she presses for more information. “What do you mean he’s gone?”

“I mean he’s _gone_ , Miss Swan. I don’t know if he ran off or if he was taken. I don’t- I don’t _know_!”

“Okay, okay. We can handle this.”

“Handle it? Henry just _vanished_ and Spencer—”

“Spencer’s back at the hospital. I took care of that,” Emma assures on her way out with a quick wave to Nurse Ratched. She pulls the phone away from her mouth and asks the agents, “Would one of you mind hanging back here to monitor him for a few hours? There’s a situation.”

“Your son?” Scully asks the question like she knows the answer and wishes she didn’t.

“Yeah,” Emma answers. Her voice cracks in the middle of the syllable. She takes a deep breath and lifts the phone to talk to Regina again. “So, you went to pick Henry up from school and then...just...poof? Gone?”

“Of course not! I- I _did_ come to get him, but we were- I should have never have tried taking him for junk food. Not with you know who out there.”

“Okay, he’s not Voldemort.”

“Now’s not the time for humor, Emma! I’ve already looked down the four blocks surrounding the school and I couldn’t find him anywhere! He’s only been gone ten minutes and there’s nowhere he could have disappeared to that quickly unless—”

“Unless he’s in a car,” Emma says with building dread. “Where are you right now?”

“I can come to you. It’ll be faster. Unhealthy dependency issues with magic or not, this is serious.”

“I really wouldn’t argue with you right now if I was alone,” she quietly tells Regina. She looks over her shoulder and sees only Scully hot on her heels as she hurries to the ground floor of the hospital. “I’ll call David and ask for the cavalry. We can make an announcement or just spread the news from person to person. We’ll get the whole town to look for him. Just tell me where you are.”

“The hardware store.”

It takes seven minutes to reach Regina. Seven minutes to call David and tell him to round up Ruby and Granny and tell anyone they pass along the way that Henry’s missing. Seven minutes to have Agent Scully’s eyes on her from the passenger seat of the squad car. Seven minutes to worry and hold back tears because Regina’s falling apart and one of them needs to keep it together right now. Seven additional minutes Henry’s been missing, boldly and stealthily taken from Regina’s side ten minutes before that. Seven _teen_ whole minutes. Like the age Emma was when she was pregnant with him and made the decision to put him up for adoption, when she made the scary and painful plan that brought him to Regina and to Storybrooke.

“We have to find him,” Regina demands as soon as Emma’s out of the car. The brunette swiftly closes the distance between them and grabs her by her coat. “We have to find him before he’s hurt. I can’t- Greg took him. I know it! He took Henry to hurt me like I’ve hurt him!”

“We’ll find him,” Emma firmly states. “We will.”

“You think Greg Mendel abducted your son?” That’s how Scully announces her presence to Regina. The redhead’s question isn't laced with confusion or judgement, but Regina's vulnerable twice over with this happening so soon after her recent loss.

Regina opens her mouth while her eyes steel over and Emma can tell she's about to go off on Scully, so Emma grabs Regina's arms and shakes her just enough to redirect her attention. “She can help,” Emma says. And then, “There’s nowhere in town this guy will be able to hide.”

“What if he leaves with Henry? He can cross the town line. He might have already! Emma—!”

“I'll call the local bureau,” Scully offers. “Roadblocks, search grids. You name it, they’ll do it. Amber alerts draw a lot of public attention, too.”

“I don't think he would have left town,” Emma argues, even as she attempts to hide her fear about the potential backlash Scully's resources could cause. “If this is all about Regina, and if she's right about why he took Henry, then he’d want to stay close to watch her suffer.”

“Say that's true,” Scully begins. “Say he is still in town. Where could he go that all your heightened patrols the last few days missed?”

“I don't know. It's not like I went door to door asking neighbors if they saw anything, or knocked and waited for Greg Mendel to answer. Maybe there are some abandoned properties I don't know about and didn't think to check.”

“Aren't you sheriff? Wouldn't you know which buildings are abandoned?”

“I've only been sheriff for a couple months,” Emma explains. “I don't even know all the zoning laws here yet.”

“Wouldn't working with the mayor solve that issue?”

“It’s not like we meet up to discuss the various inner workings of this town every week,” Regina snaps. “But if sharing all the boring paperwork helps find my son then stop talking and start driving!”

Regina thumps the heel of a palm on Emma's shoulder as she pulls away from the blonde and releases her coat. She runs to the squad car and settles into the passenger seat in record time.

Emma and Scully exchange a look as she does, both of them a little rattled in one way or another, but they don't question the brunette or the decision to head to Town Hall. Along the way, she hands her phone to Regina. “Text David to let him know where they can meet us.”

Five minutes after Regina updates him, she rushes into the building while Emma opens the back door for Scully. Doors that only open from the outside aren't great for saving time during an abduction case, but it's not like Emma or Regina's two-door cars are any better.

When David, Ruby and Granny arrive, Emma only has two abandoned properties written down in the notes app on her phone.

“Where do you want us?” Granny’s the first of the three to speak. She has her crossbow slung over one shoulder and her quiver on the other with steadfast determination to hunt.

“How much do you need to track him?” Emma’s aware the question will sound strange to Scully, but it’s innocuous enough that the redhead won’t immediately suspect she’s standing in a room with two generations of werewolves.

Ruby diminishes all space between them and hugs Emma to provide more than support. “Something of his,” Ruby quietly answers. “Preferably something he’s touched recently. Strong scents have better results.”

They pull away as soon as Ruby’s finished explaining, afraid the hug lasts long enough to look suspicious.

Scully doesn’t say anything nor does she look at the two of them any differently. Regina’s staring them down like a hawk, though. One of her perfectly sculpted brows arches when she and Emma lock eyes and Emma shuffles over to her.

Scully’s at the table perpendicular to Regina’s desk where Regina herself stands to scour through her files on potential hideouts to investigate. Emma pretends to look at one file specifically alongside Regina as a cover in order to give the brunette the information Ruby had shared with her.

“Maybe something at the apartment,” Regina says. “I don’t… Since he hasn’t been staying with me- Especially not after… I don’t have anything that he’s come into contact with recently.”

Scully looks up at them a few seconds later and looks just curious enough that Emma’s not sure Regina said that last part quietly enough. The agent remains at the table looking over several files in front of her, however, and Emma accepts that as a _very_ small victory. She doesn’t think they’ll have many more between now and _when_ they find Henry—because that’s not up for debate—so she takes the least amount of comfort possible in them. Comfort is as hard to come by as victories, big or small, especially when Mary Margaret joins them with one of Henry’s scarves and Archie half an hour later.

Emma’s never been more grateful to see the shrink and his dog. Unfortunately, the added super smeller only gets them so far.

Archie’s still following Pongo along the water while Ruby and Granny search the other side of the surrounding area and its expansive nothingness when Regina growls, “Two werewolves and a dog couldn’t detect _anything_ beyond the salt water.”

Emma checks to make sure Scully’s on the phone with her partner a safe distance away by the car and waits until she hears, “Mulder, it’s me,” before she focuses on Regina again. “Give it a little more time.”

“We don’t _have_ time. You probably know that better than anyone.”

“Right. But we’re working on it. You just need to breathe.”

“Don’t tell me to breathe when that man has my son,” Regina shouts.

Everyone looks at them for a moment. Ruby, Granny, Archie and even Scully keep their attention on Emma and Regina until they each make eye contact with Emma. Only then do they give their current tasks their full attention again.

“I think I’ll give you two a moment,” David says before he claps a hand on Emma’s shoulder and walks over to where Ruby and Granny continue their failed search.

Emma thinks she’s never sounded more like a mom then when she asks Regina, “Do you think this is helping? Freaking out and yelling at me. Do you think that’ll help find Henry any faster?”

Regina huffs, but she also looks like she’s on the verge of tears. “No,” she admits without meeting Emma’s eyes. “I keep hoping it’ll make me feel better for just a fraction of a second, but it doesn’t.”

“Okay, so...take a breath. I know it’s hard—”

“And yet you’re oddly calm.”

“Believe me, I want to scream right now. Every _moment_ he’s away from us, I want to scream. But then I might spiral and I can’t lose control like that.”

Regina takes the suggested breath. It’s shaky, but her next words are not. “And I can’t lose anyone else.”

Emma nods. “I think I can get one of the others to fake a lead and take Agent Scully with them. Then maybe you can find Henry the same way you found me in the alley.”

“That I can do,” Regina says. She lifts her hands from where they’re limp at her sides to hover on either side of her hips and flexes her fingers. “Just say when.”

* * *

The day ends in crazed frustration. Regina’s at her wits end about her magic being blocked by something every time she _thinks_ they might be so, so close. It's why she tries again and again, for _hours_ , to no avail and runs herself and Emma in circles. David had smartly given up after the third attempt, but Emma didn't have the same kind of luxury he did. He's not the one who shares Henry with Regina and, therefore, he doesn't have to follow her to the end of the world in search of the kid like Emma does.

Emma's controlled, somewhat calm state of mind starts to fray at the edges. By the time David waves them off with the suggestion to call it a night while the town forms one giant search party in their stead, Emma's hanging by a few weak strings.

“Don’t get used to this,” Regina says as she leaves the door open for Emma on her way inside.

“I’d rather make up with my self-righteous mother,” Emma jokes, but there’s more bitterness in her tone than wryness.

“I thought you went back to the apartment with Henry and David.”

“Yeah, and it feels like she’s trying really hard not to start another fight, but I feel her judgy eyes on me all the time. I can see the way she so desperately wants to say something. I can’t imagine what she really wants to say about _this_.”

“I’m sure she blames me for that. Just like everything else,” Regina tells her. “And most of it is.”

“Even if she blames you, she probably has more to say to me about this. She probably wants to twist it and say that I let this happen. That trusting you is how we lost Henry.”

“What do you think?”

“I think...I’m in this thing with you. A hundred percent. I see the way Henry wants to forgive you. And he probably wants to move back your place. I don’t blame him. That apartment isn’t meant for a family of four, especially not when two of them are still getting...reacquainted.”

“Spare me,” Regina groans. “Or I’ll wish I had another sleeping curse. For myself.”

Emma chuckles. For a split second, she feels a small spark of joy and she’s relaxed. It fades as quickly as her smile does when Henry’s absence chills her to the bone a moment later. “I’m gonna kill Greg. If hurts Henry—”

“Careful now, Miss Swan. You’re starting to sound like me.”

“The family that slays together stays together,” Emma half-asks, half-states and shrugs.

Regina rolls her eyes, but she also displays a hint of a smile. Like Emma’s earlier smile, Regina’s doesn’t last long either. “Do you think Owen’s unstable enough to hurt him?”

Emma’s eyes bulge as she struggles to form an answer, but the truth is, “I don’t know. All I know about him is what you and the agents told me. Aside from that, he’s just a picture in a manila folder.”

Regina sighs and collapses in the dining room chair she’d sat in at breakfast with her, Henry and David. She props herself on an elbow she sets on the table and puts her head in her hand. “I can’t lose him, Emma,” the brunette barely says above a whisper.

“We’ll do whatever we have to to make sure neither one of us loses him,” Emma promises as she inches toward the dining room table.

“You don’t understand. You have a family. You have your parents and you haven’t made anyone in town suffer like I have, so you still have a chance to make friends or find a partner. But me? Henry’s my _life_. He is _everything_. And after Daniel, I can’t bear the thought of anything—”

“Hey, I told you we’ll find him,” Emma says a little forcefully to ensure Regina hears her this time. _Really_ hears her.

“Alive? Unharmed? I can...I can accept a lot of things. Various punishments, imprisonment, even Henry hating me for another couple of years. Hell, he could hate me for the rest of his life if it means he’s home safe. What I can’t accept, what I _cannot_ live with, is Henry suffering. Especially not because of something I did. And not because I couldn’t just drive him home from school until Owen wasn’t a threat anymore.”

Emma stops beside Regina at the table then. As slowly as she’d approached the other woman, Emma crouches down until she’s below Regina’s eye level and rests her left arm on the edge of the tabletop. “Greg- Owen, whatever he wants to call himself, did this. You’re not responsible for his actions.”

“How can you say that?” Regina lifts her head and stares at Emma like she can see right through to the blonde’s soul. “When you know the only reason he’s even here, why he has Henry now, is because I took his father from him?”

“Because you cast a curse that resulted in my parents choosing to send me away for twenty-eight years, but I don’t see you as the Evil Queen. I see you as Regina. And I’m here. I’ve been here...with you. I might not be your greatest ally, but—”

Emma doesn’t even have enough time to process the soft and slightly hungry look in Regina’s eyes before the other woman crashes their lips together. She feels one hand cover hers on the table while the other threads itself into Emma’s hair and securely cups the back of her neck. Her eyes are closed as soon as the little surprised sound she’d released is hushed, trapped between the two of them. Swallowed up in place of a quiet hum.

Emma hardly notices when she moves her free hand, previously on her own leg, to Regina’s thigh and squeezes. She only notices how responsive she is to the kiss when Regina twitches beneath her touch and whines before flicking her tongue against Emma’s lips.

Emma pulls back a short distance to breathe but neither woman feels the loss of contact because she latches onto Regina again in just the span of two quickened heartbeats. She’s starting to stand up when Regina swipes her tongue against Emma’s upper lip for a second time and slides her hand up Regina’s side, up to the back of Regina’s neck. She supports the woman’s head while it’s tipped back, throat very much exposed beneath the scarf Regina wears.

One of Regina’s hands slides down to Emma’s hip and the other guides Emma’s hand to her right breast. Both women groan before Regina rises from the chair.

Emma keeps her hand on the back of Regina’s neck but it’s no longer for support. Instead, she rakes her nails against the brunette’s scalp and gently tugs at Regina’s hair once they’re both standing.

Little to no time passes before Regina walks into Emma and Emma stumbles backward one step, two steps, until she lets Regina push her back against the nearest wall. Emma then slides her hand from Regina’s breast down to the hem of her shirt and slips it beneath the soft material.

Regina gasps when Emma’s fingers skim across her stomach. Regina moans when Emma wedges a thigh between hers. Regina sucks Emma’s tongue, ultimately dominating the kiss, when the younger woman lifts her knee to press it more firmly against the _right_ spot.

Emma’s rewarded by Regina popping the button on her jeans, which elicits a content and relieved sigh.

Regina keeps her hand above Emma’s non-existent belt after that. Emma enjoys every second of it.

The guilt sets in when she remembers Henry’s abduction is the only reason they can do this in a public, shared space in the house. Then, Emma’s kisses turn desperate and a little messy. She bites, she tastes, she feels Regina’s hurried pulse between her lips as she sucks and flicks and whispers, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Emma repeats as she kisses what’s left of the fading bruises around Regina’s neck. She lets go of Regina’s scarf, drops it on the floor and doesn’t remember tugging it loose in the first place. “I’m sorry,” she says again as she wraps an arm around Regina’s waist, slides it down to her ass and then pulls the woman impossibly close. “I’m sorry,” she says with a stilted breath, the apology broken into three syllables instead of two, before kissing Regina sweetly on the lips.

She tastes salt and pulls back. Her head lightly thumps against the wall behind her before she opens her suddenly wet eyes. Regina meets her gaze with tear tracks down her cheeks for the second time in under a week and then looks to Emma’s lips before her breath hitches.

Regina slowly moves in. Their lips touch, the contact barely there and fleeting, and the brunette leans forward even more until she rests her forehead against Emma’s shoulder. Regina takes a few stuttered breaths, breathes in deeply despite the tears and haywire sinuses.

Emma removes her hand from Regina’s ass and, instead, wraps her arm around the woman’s waist. Holds her. Runs her fingers through Regina’s hair and promises, “You’re not losing anyone else.”

Another minute passes—maybe more—before Regina lifts her head and looks at Emma again.

Emma stares first into glistening brown eyes and then at Regina’s kiss-swollen lips. Her eyes wander just a little lower after that to watch for a moment as the woman’s chest rises and falls with her shallow and quick breathing.

And then Regina steps away and takes both of Emma’s hands in her own.

Regina only releases one hand when they reach the stairs, keeping the other solidly in her grip as she leads Emma to the master bedroom. Regina lets go of Emma’s other hand at last but seemingly only to peel off her silk button down. The brunette discards it on top of the dresser where she pulls out a black camisole that she shrugs on after she plucks the black bra from her body.

Emma stares openly at Regina’s back as the woman undresses and redresses, marvels at the dimples on her lower back and how her muscles flex as she moves this way and that.

When Regina faces her again, the woman’s covered from chest to pants and looks down at Emma’s feet almost instantly. “I’ll allow street clothes in my bed just this once, but the boots have to go,” Regina commands as she sits on the edge of the bed and takes off her own shoes.

Emma curtly nods and bends over to do as instructed. In her socks and the same clothes she’s been wearing all day, Emma walks over to the empty side of the bed...and hesitates. “What do you need?” She asks the question as Regina throws back the sheets and settles herself in.

Once Regina appears to find a comfortable enough position, she pulls back the covers on Emma’s side of the bed and answers, “Lay here with me.”

And that’s how Emma finds herself in bed with Regina, wiggling across the mattress to meet the brunette toward the middle until Regina’s back molds to Emma’s front. She drapes an arm over Regina’s waist and Regina grips it with the hand that’s not tucked under her pillow.

“Goodnight, Emma.”

Emma’s throat dries out and threatens to close up before she rasps out, “Goodnight, Regina.”

She expects an awkward encounter in the morning complete with Regina hurrying to dress herself before Emma can see her so scantily clad in the light of day. Expects the brunette to prioritize making breakfast over starting a conversation with the blonde, especially if that conversation might lead to what happened last night.

Instead, Emma wakes up with a dopey smile before she realizes she’s alone. The sheets beside her are turned down like Regina had never been there at all, like she’d only been a figment of Emma’s imagination. If not for the scratch paper, small like something torn out of a little memo pad, Emma would have second guessed herself about reality versus fever dreams all day. At least whenever she wouldn’t be thinking about Henry.

Emma picks up the folded paper with her name written elegantly across it while she sits up. Her back touches the headboard for a split second before she reads all she needs to know about why she’s alone.

_Emma,_

_I’m trying the location spell again. This time I’ll wait until I’m closer to the origin of the magical interference._

That’s when Emma loses it.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the end of the road, folks! The final chapter. Last stop. It's also the longest chapter in this journey at just above a whopping 10,000 words. So, enjoy all that. And thank you so much for reading. :)

Emma launches herself out of Regina’s bed and stuffs the note into the front pocket of her jeans, pulls her hair into a ponytail and almost forgets to shove her feet into her boots. She’s amazed she even finds them in her haste, especially when her sole focus lands on _Regina, Regina, Henry_.

It takes most of her remaining strength to drive to the marina without wrecking any signage or running into storefronts as she speeds through the town. For all David’s promises about a large search party, Emma doesn’t see anyone along the streets she takes to reach Regina. Storybrooke is calmer than ever on this particular weekday before 6am, especially around the marina.

“This is _not_ good,” Emma mutters to herself as she parks the cruiser two spaces over from the only car in the lot: Regina’s Mercedes.

She’s halfway out of the car before she cuts the engine and races over to look through Regina’s windows. Everything looks as it should at first. Upon closer scrutiny, however, Regina’s phone sits on the passenger’s seat with a few items Emma guesses are from the purse she sees on the floor in front of it. The scattered contents lead her to believe a struggle occurred, but both car doors are shut.

Shut, but not locked.

Emma opens the passenger door and grabs Regina’s phone. She silently thanks and judges the woman for not having a passcode on it and easily turns on the display. She turns as white as a sheet at the partial text message on the screen. Regina’s last words before she may have been attacked were to Emma. Typos litter the short, unfinished message, but there’s enough there for Emma to understand Regina’s in trouble.

“Emma?”

David’s voice startles her, but she’s relieved and grateful when she realizes it’s him and not someone else. She’s so grateful, in fact, that she hugs him as soon as he jogs over to her asking if everything’s alright.

“Have you seen Regina?” She pulls away and stares at him with as much worry in her expression as there is in her voice.

David frowns. “No. Last I saw her was when you two went to, well, her place, I assume.”

“How long have you been out here?”

“Not long. Maybe ten minutes. I took a risk and caught up with those FBI agents at Granny’s. I asked if they’d be willing to try again.”

“Desperate times?”

“Most desperate. I thought more people would have shown up last night. What you and Regina saw before you left was as active as it got and we still came up with nothing. After a couple hours, the energy waned and people started leaving. By then, Pongo was beat and Archie wasn’t fairing much better.”

“So you sent them home like with Regina and me.”

“Yeah.”

“What about you? Did you go back to the apartment?”

“Your mom’s been searching across town for the last hour with Ruby and I’ve been on this side most of the night. I only took a break when I went to get the agents. They’re combing the area. I think they split up.”

Emma sighs. “I hope that’s a good thing for all of us.”

“Them trying to cover more ground?”

“Regina came here without me. I don’t know when she left. She wasn’t at the house when I woke up. I have no way of knowing how long she’s been out here and I don’t think she’s alone.”

“Even if she’s not, she couldn’t have gone far. No many places to hide around here either.”

“And yet Henry’s still out there. What if- What if he’s in…” she trails off and pales as she thinks the absolute worst. Her eyes land on the water as it ripples and flows in the manmade passageways all around them and clutches her stomach. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Hey, hey,” David comfortingly rests a hand on her back and touches the other to her shoulder. “Don’t think like that. We—” David’s phone rings and stops all conversation. “It’s Mary Margaret.”

Mary Margaret relays that she and Ruby found Spencer’s car abandoned and hidden in a shed on the expansive property of a farmhouse on the edge of town.

“It might have only been a weekend house for whoever owns it,” David tells Emma after hanging up with Mary Margaret. “It’s furnished, according to Snow, but there isn’t much food there. But it also looks like someone’s been there as recently as a day ago.”

“And Henry?” She dares hope, even though the sinking feeling in her gut hasn’t left her since his disappearance.

David shakes his head and Emma still deflates despite knowing deep down that would be his answer. “Only thing she could find that seemed revealing about who’s been out there was another one of those keychains left out in the open. On the kitchen table.”

“Keychain. Like the one Greg…”

“Yeah. The strange thing is that it was the only thing left on the table. Like it was on display.”

Emma closes her eyes as the sinking feeling weighs more heavily on her in that moment.  “I need to find Regina. I think he’s just been waiting for the perfect moment to strike and it looks like he already took it. And Henry...Henry could be wandering through the woods, confused and cold. He’s only been a means to an end for Greg.”

Emma thinks she’s about to start hyperventilating and David stops her with a hand on her arm. He’s about to pull her into a hug just past the docks when Mulder finds them.

“Still no luck?” Mulder sounds compassionate. He also looks concerned and sympathetic, so at least he’s not always immature.

“We actually think there’s another missing person,” David answers. Emma still can’t speak just yet. She wipes her nose when she sniffles, although she doesn’t feel any snot.

“Who else is unaccounted for?”

“The mayor,” David says. “She came back here on her own. Her car’s still in the lot and so are her belongings.”

Emma backs herself into the guardrail between the boardwalk and the water and tries to breathe. The salty and fish invested area makes it difficult to suck in the air she desperately needs because it smells even worse than she already feels. She shakes her head, eyes closed, and rakes her nails through her hair until her fingers bump into her hair tie. She drops them onto her thighs with a light smack and opens her eyes as she exhales. That’s when she sees it.

Just before the paved road that runs alongside the boardwalk, the light catches a green stone at just the right angle that it’s all Emma sees. Not Mulder’s plain black dress shoes that match his very official, screams-federal-agent suit or David standing with his hands on his hips as he twists his upper body from one side to the other.

“Regina.” It’s partly an exclamation and partly her continued shock that leaves her grasping at straws, still hopeful even when her nerves feel too frayed for such things.

She doesn’t hear Mulder or David. She doesn’t even know they’re following her. It doesn’t even register with her when they’re standing just behind where she’s crouched to pick up a ring, _the_ ring. Regina’s ring. Proof they’re heading in the right direction.

“She’s around here somewhere,” Emma says before she jumps up and rushes off to follow the road even farther from the parking lot.

She jogs after just a few steps and full on sprints within thirty seconds, impatient. She operates under the belief that she’ll find Henry in the same place she’ll find Regina and that’s all that matters. She won’t take her time. She can’t wait any longer to find them. Seconds, minutes, the hours it’s already been since she’s seen either of them are long enough. Too long.

Emma can’t hear Mulder or David close behind. In the back of her mind, she’s sure they’re still following her. She’s also sure they’re far enough behind her that she’s comfortable enough to let out grunts and growls with every passing second her search doesn’t bring results. She might not have cared even if they were standing right in front of her, though.

She stomps her foot like a child when the grunts and groans aren’t enough. But none of it helps. Frustrated tears build up in her eyes and she tells herself, “I’m not losing anyone either,” but she’s not the only one to hear it. She just isn’t aware of that fact.

Emma goes on, unaware, and repeats those words on a loop in her head and thinks about Henry and Regina. She watches all the moments, good and otherwise, she’s shared with either of them play in her head like a movie.

Except this isn’t a movie. Not one with a good ending. Not unless she finds her family. She just wants her family.

Emma feels a jolt within her. In the blink of an eye, she sees Regina’s note hover in mid-air like magic. Magic that she doesn’t have as far as she knows. Whatever it is, the note starts moving and Emma’s not about to lose her latest connection to Regina just like she promises herself she won’t lose either Regina or Henry.

The note brings her inside the cannery. It’s dark inside. No lights appear to be on and there isn’t enough natural light to illuminate the various rooms. Emma resorts to using her phone as a flashlight that she holds in one hand while she carries her gun in front of her in the other. She keeps her finger off the trigger and the gun pointed down but easily accessible for a quick draw.

And that’s exactly what she wants to do when the note flutters to the ground inside a narrow observation room that reveals Regina screaming on a gurney with her back sharply arched. Emma immediately starts ramming her shoulder into the door when it doesn’t open right away. She jiggles the handle a few times when her shoulder hurts and the door still doesn’t budge.

Greg finally stops what he’s doing to look at the strip of plexiglass in the wall that separates them. His eyes never meet hers, so he doesn’t see the wildness in them, but he still runs scared.

Emma kicks down the door with her gun in hand and watches through the window as Greg bolts from the room just a second before she enters. She’s ready to chase after him and makes it halfway across the room in no time at all, but Regina's there. Strapped to a gurney like the ones used to transport Ruby and Billy to the hospital. The hospital that Greg most likely broke Albert Spencer out of and could have stolen the gurney from on their way out to the farmhouse. The same hospital where Regina needs to be by the looks of her.

“What did he do to you?” Emma focuses solely on the brunette as she asks breathily. She barely manages to find her voice. She’s staring down at a woman who’s usually as strong and vibrant as the fire she creates in the palms of her hands, but Regina’s weak and limp where she lays with electrodes stuck to her temples.

Regina doesn’t speak or even open her red-rimmed eyes. She’s only ever looked this unbothered, _unaffected_ , by anything when she's resting against Emma. But this isn’t Regina’s home and the brunette’s not on the welcoming couch in her living room and they still don’t have Henry.

“You can’t give up on me, Regina,” she insists before she sets her gun down on the table in front of the machine used to shock the older woman. She turns off the torture device with a hard stab of her thumb to the orange-glowing power switch and doesn’t waste another second to free Regina from her restraints.

As she loosens the straps, her eyes roam and absorb more of the damage Greg inflicted.

Sweat stains ruin Regina’s red, long-sleeved V-neck with an attached choker that conceals most of the now faint bruising around Regina’s neck. Every visible bit of Regina’s temporarily pale skin shines with a sheen of sweat as well.

When she tugs the last strap off the other woman, she sees a leather bracelet clamped around Regina’s wrist like a cuff. It’s definitely not a fashion statement. Not one Regina would make. Emma furrows her brow and doesn’t hesitate to tear it off Regina. It falls to the floor at her feet as Emma’s attention narrows to Regina’s muted red and severely chapped lips. They stand out among her overly relaxed features. The sight of it all prompts her to brush her fingers down one of Regina’s cheeks.

Regina trembles.

Emma wants to cry with joy and relief. Instead, she pulls herself together and immediately says, “I know you’re tired, but Henry’s still out there. He needs you.”

Regina groans and twitches, either as a side-effect from the torture or from trying to move. Only her eyelids do. It takes a baited breath from Emma before they open and the blonde’s bewitched as soon as that happens.

“He-e-nry,” Regina croaks out with obvious concern.

“He needs you alive, okay? I’ll find him, but you need to be here when I do. _Here_. With us.”

“Where’s Greg?” Mulder’s startling question alerts her to the other people in the room.

Emma turns to see him and David standing just inside and both look winded, but she can tell by the looks they give her that they’ve been standing there for some time. She shakes her head as if to clear the cobwebs and opens her mouth to answer when a gunshot rings out.

Mulder takes at least three large strides before he shouts, “Scul-lay!”

David and Emma cringe in response to his loudness within the enclosed space, but Mulder doesn’t notice. He’s already at the back door Greg had run out of only minutes earlier.

After the pain in her ears dulls, Emma looks at David with wide eyes full of indecision. “I- Could you- Stay with her, please. I need to—”

“Find Henry,” David quickly, resolutely says and steps up to the gurney. “I’ll make sure she’s okay. Go.”

Emma spares Regina one more look to see the brunette’s eyes already fixed on her. Emma’s lips quiver as a wave of fresh tears rush to her eyes, but she whips around and swipes her gun from the table on her way out. If she lets out a fractured, pre-cry breath as she bangs open the door then so be it. It’s all she allows herself as she chases after Mulder, who’s sprinting—and still shouting—for his partner.

When they find her, Greg holds what Emma assumes to be the redhead’s gun to Scully’s head.

“Drop it or I shoot,” Greg warns Mulder, who has his own gun trained on the man. Greg’s carefully sliding back with Scully tightly wrapped in his arm and pressed flush against him. He glances over his shoulder but doesn’t turn his head, which leaves Mulder and Emma in his sightline. For someone who’s been stuck at a psychiatric hospital for years, he apparently knows how to evade a shootout well enough that it might not result in the government’s favor.

“Let her go,” Mulder instructs. “Unlike you, I’ve actually shot a gun before. This gun in my hands isn’t new to me either. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if it comes to that. Let’s make sure it doesn’t.”

“Stay back!” Greg shakes the gun, hand already on the trigger, but keeps it pointed at Scully as he shuffles back, back, back to the edge of the cannery’s cargo port.

Emma stands off to the side and a handful of long steps behind Mulder. Her gun’s only lifted halfway, ready to draw but still pointed at the ground. She holds steady, even though she has a slightly better shot at Greg than Mulder from her position. She doesn’t want to take the shot. Even if it means Scully might not make it out of this standoff, Emma won’t risk losing the _one_ person who knows where to find her son.

“Let her go and tell us where Henry is!” Emma’s surprised to hear her own voice then. She didn’t even know she’d spoken until she’d expressed every last word.

“I’m not going back to that hospital,” Greg tells them before he finally turns his head to look at the water.

The water he plunges into after he shoves Scully toward Mulder, who immediately lowers his weapon and rushes to catch the redhead before she can faceplant on the pavement, and throws himself off the edge of the landing.

“No!” Emma screams and drops her gun. She doesn’t think twice before she runs after Greg at full speed and dives into the chilly, salty water.

She grabs him as soon as she finds him holding himself under, waiting to drown, and wrestles with him until her lungs ache and her ribs protest the frequent elbowing. She bashes his head against the metal underside of the port and disorients him long enough to pull him to the surface with her. They choke and sputter while Emma carries most of Greg’s flopping and heavy weight. She struggles to stay afloat because of her inability to tread water for the both of them for too long, but Mulder comes to her rescue and helps her drag the kidnapper to shore.

She spits up a little more water and wipes some from her eyes along with soaked and stringy loose strands of hair. When Emma sees Greg sprawled out in the sand with a bleeding gash on his forehead, she all but growls, “Where’s my son?”

Greg only laughs maniacally in between coughs.

Emma slaps him. Mulder grabs her arm and pulls her back, holds her there any time she surges forward, while she asks over and over again, “Where’s my son?!”

Greg’s answer is still the same sickening laughter.

That’s her breaking point. She pushes onto her feet and treks back to Regina and David inside the cannery as tears mix with the seawater on her face.

Regina’s sitting up and propped against David, but she doesn’t look much healthier. Now, though, she’s aware enough to use her worn and scratchy voice to ask, “Is he with you?”

Emma sniffles and shakes her head. “Greg wouldn’t tell me.”

Regina drops her head on David’s shoulder and closes her eyes. Emma only knows the other woman sheds her own tears when she sees Regina shake with silent sobs.

“This can’t be how it ends,” Emma cries.

David looks at her with so much empathy, like only a man who’d had to fight the Queen’s guards with his newborn baby in his arms just to place her in a tree and say goodbye can relate. He opens his free arm to her and Emma immediately runs into it.

She’s shivering in David’s arms and clutching at Regina’s shirt tight enough that she might actually rip it. They’re all crying and leaning on and into each other for support and it’s a lot. It’s a lot, but it’s not enough. It’s not Henry.

Emma squeezes Regina’s shoulder and thinks, _I won’t lose anyone either, he is everything, we’ll find him. Henry._

Regina gasps before Emma notices she’s not shivering anymore. Instead, Emma’s warm and tingly. And the hand she has on Regina’s shoulder glows bright white like it had before Regina’s note had started floating, leading Emma to Regina.

“You have magic,” Regina says almost reverently.

“I...guess. I don’t really know. I just- It’s...how I found you.”

Regina’s eyes flick up to Emma with awe and a little bit of disbelief glimmering in them. The brunette looks like she has questions, so many questions, but pushes aside whatever she wants to say. Instead, she instructs Emma to, “Do it again. Do it to find Henry.”

“I don’t know how it works,” Emma explains, near hysterics. “I panicked when I thought- When… I was desperate.”

Not willing to argue, Regina says, “Give me your hand” and holds out her own. The second their palms meet, Emma feels it. Feels the energy. _Their_ energy. It’s potent.

Regina nudges David away and leans heavily against Emma like they’re back on the couch, cuddling. She only needs the support for another minute before Emma feels more of her energy transfer to Regina than Regina transfers to her. After several more seconds, however, it’s not as unpleasant as it sounds when Regina gives a little bit of hers in return. Emma would rather have _that_ taste on the back of her tongue anyway.

“Wow,” Emma exhales before they’re even done.

After what feels like several minutes, the light from both of them fades and Henry’s scarf, which Regina had taken for her solo search, hovers between them and David. It’s shrouded in a lavender mist that fades as soon as the scarf leads them to a storage chest. It sits just outside one of the large double doors on the opposite side of the cannery from where Greg had held Regina captive.

Emma and Regina, who’s looking a little more like herself after the magic boost, barely make it around the corner before they hear the thumping. The scarf drops on top of the chest, but both mothers already know it’s Henry calling for help from inside.

Regina flicks her wrist and the lid flies open.

Henry gasps for debatably fresh air and grips the sides of the chest but doesn't try to pull himself up. He doesn’t have to when Emma grabs one arm and Regina takes the other.

They carefully extract him and then smother him all over again by squishing him between them. Emma and Regina hug each other just as much as they hug him. Emma’s not complaining and, from the lack of pissy-ness, it sounds like Regina isn’t either.

They each kiss one of his cheeks and pull back just enough to see his face. Then, Henry speaks. “Mom? M-Ma?”

“Are you okay?” Regina sounds a lot like she did the night they met. She even steps back to inspect Henry for injuries. Regina’s checking fingers and toes and confirms there’s not a single hair plucked from his head. Physically he’s only a little banged up, but it’s nothing he can’t recover from with an ice pack and a relaxing day at home.

Henry’s answer confirms _some_ injury, however. “I-I’ll...be okay.” He’s stuttering and looks from one mother to the other with wide, still scared, eyes.

Emma and Regina share a knowing, worried look. They might have to make a visit to Archie on his one day off if they don't stop by for a last minute appointment before the end of the week.

For now, they hug again and don’t let go for a while. Not until the FBI agents clear their throats off to the side of the cannery. Greg’s cuffed and each agent grips a hand under one of his arms. He’s very much detained.

That doesn’t stop Henry from shuddering between Emma and Regina, though.

They hold him tighter.

“We’re gonna have him checked out at your hospital,” Mulder tells them. “After that, we’re taking off with the patient. He’ll be transferred to a maximum security facility this time around and he’ll be there for a while.”

“Thank you, agents,” Regina says.

“Don’t thank us, Mayor Mills,” Scully replies. “Your partner’s the one who captured him. We’re just his ride out of here.”

“We’re not partners,” both women insist.

Scully’s lips quirk into an amused smile she quickly remembers to hide. The redhead still shares a look with Mulder, though. And Mulder makes it obvious he doesn’t believe Emma or Regina for a second. The annoying way he flashes all his teeth and beams at them conveys as much.

So, Emma responds in kind. “Guess that means _your_ honeymoon is over.”

Scully’s brow arches and her blue eyes reveal just the tiniest bit of surprise, but she’s much better at staying composed—much like Regina—than Mulder. The redhead inhales more than she says a single word or sound while Mulder laughs too loudly to be anything other than nervous.

His laughter ends abruptly, but Agent Mulder clears his throat afterward as if to make it less awkward. Then, he shifts and tugs Mendel with him, away from Emma and the others. “We’ll leave you to your evening,” Mulder says before he starts to walk off with their prisoner slash patient.

Scully follows him while keeping her eyes on Emma and Regina until she physically can’t maintain the contact.

Which is when Henry asks, “Why do they think you’re partners?”

Emma looks from Henry to the agents. Thankfully, neither Mulder nor Scully look back. Mendel does, but it’s not about Henry’s comment. It can’t be when he acknowledges Henry, herself and, lastly, unsettlingly, Regina with a cold look in his eyes.

She instinctively moves closer to Henry and ends up placing a hand on Regina’s back in the process. Both of them stand protectively on either side of their son with him wedged firmly in the middle.

“Moms?”

Emma snaps her head to Henry and sees his furrowed brow, wide eyes, chilled cheeks. She pats his shoulder with the hand she doesn’t have on Regina and says, “Because we’ve been working together since they’ve been in town, and I think it’s been going well.”

As instinctively as she’d stepped closer to Henry, she looks up at Regina over the top of his head. Regina’s looking at her with an openness in her steady gaze. It feels as intimate as burning invisible pathways all over the brunette’s body last night.

“Henry?!”

Emma and Regina turn to the sharp and surprised voice. It’s Mary Margaret, running toward them in heels she has no business running in because she very clearly can’t do it without wobbling or occasionally slowing down to prevent herself from falling. Emma wants to laugh, but she can’t even do that about something so small. Not when things between them are strained.

Her hand drifts and her fingers flex. She doesn’t realize she’s gripping Regina’s side until Regina lays a hand over hers. Emma immediately looks at Regina, who’s not even looking at her and doesn’t meet her panicked gaze even after Emma’s sure the brunette feels her staring.

Emma keeps her hand there despite her panic, which lessens when she realizes Regina doesn’t remove either of their hands from where they’re curled around her ribs. She leans in over the top of Henry’s head and takes a breath as she readies herself to say something, leans almost impossibly closer to mother and son for support.

Mary Margaret finally closes the distance between them and halts Emma mid-thought as she wraps Henry in a hug. He’s pulled from Emma and Regina’s embrace and attracts the attention of both mothers instantly.

Looking away from Regina allows her to notice David staring at them, though. He’s not freaked out or pissed off. He just stands there with an expression that kind of terrifies Emma because it’s like he understands. He understands what Emma’s just barely figuring out. Then, he’s looking solely at her.

And Emma suddenly feels no older than Henry. She’s a kid again, hoping she’s wanted and that she didn’t do something wrong. Something unloveable.

“Are you okay?”

“Ye-yeah, Grandma. I’m… I just...think I want to go home.”

Emma tenses and looks away from David. Her eyes find Mary Margaret’s just as Regina lets go of her hand and steps toward Henry. Mary Margaret’s attention shifts from Emma with her sad, wide eyes to Regina as the older woman takes a step away from her and Henry.

“Okay, let’s go home,” Mary Margaret says as her eyes fall from Regina to the brunette’s side as Emma’s hand falls away and then settle on Henry again.

Mary Margaret tries to pull him farther away from Regina, and Emma, but Henry gently shrugs out of her hold and backs into Regina.

“I meant...with my mom,” Henry replies.

Emma sees Regina gasp, eyes wide with shock, as she sets her hands on Henry’s shoulders and lightly squeezes. Then, Regina looks at her. Regina’s shock softens into a worried and unsure expression that melts Emma’s heart instantly.

“If that’s alright with you,” Regina quietly says.

Emma swallows and then nods her consent, but Henry interrupts with a question and a clarification all in one.

“I want to go home with _both_ of my moms,” Henry explains, somewhat timid as though he’s not sure how his request will be received by any and all of his family.

Mary Margaret, of course, is the first to respond. She does so with strangled sounds and stammered, incomplete words for a few seconds and finally gets out, “I don’t think that’s—”

“It’s fine,” David suddenly says as he steps up to the rest of them and rests a hand on Mary Margaret’s shoulder. “Let them go.”

Emma stops breathing. Just for a second. Just long enough to notice the quick, fleeting quirk of his lips in a reassuring smile. He also gives her a nod that makes her feel like he’s on her side, like he accepts whatever it is that’s happening in general and between Emma and Regina.

“But David—”

“Let them go,” he repeats, voice still soft despite his insistence.

Regina holds Henry to her with one hand on his shoulder and the other resting over his chest, so Emma combs her fingers through his hair. She flashes a tense, awkward smile at David and hesitates before looking at Mary Margaret.

The woman looks worried and confused and Emma feels like a small, scared child all over again. She looks down at her feet in that moment and subconsciously places her hand over Regina’s on Henry’s shoulder. She doesn’t think anything of it until Mary Margaret’s eyes drift down to stare at the contact. The schoolteacher almost looks heartbroken at the sight and Emma feels the sudden urge to let go, but she doesn't. She can’t.

“Let’s go home,” Regina says.

Emma immediately looks at the brunette beside her, sees that Regina’s focus remains on Henry. That is until Regina’s eyes find hers. Until Regina gives her this _look_. Emma nods, but she wants to say thank you or cry or hug the other woman. She’s compelled to do all three things, but she holds back. She holds back and follows when Regina starts to leave, steering Henry in the direction of her car.

Only when she sees the Mercedes does Emma remember Henry’s not the only one who’s been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours. It’s also evident when Regina leans against the car to take a few breaths after opening her door. The brunette rests her weight on her forearm, which she presses into the edge of the roof.

Henry’s climbing into the backseat from the passenger’s side where Emma waits and watches the woman across from her. He pulls the seat back once he's sitting and then momentarily redirects her attention to him when he says, “Come on, Ma.”

Emma furrows her brow and asks, “Ma?”

Henry shrugs. “I can’t call you both Mom. That would get confusing.”

“Okay, but why that name for me?”

“Em- _ma_? It’s already in your name. And you came here from Boston. Isn’t that what Bostonians call their moms?”

Emma chuckles and says, “Yeah, okay, Kid. That’ll work.”

She considers sliding into the car then, but she checks on Regina again.

The older woman’s still trying to control her shallow breathing. Regina also looks seconds away from being sick, or possibly collapsing.

“Hey, why don’t I drive?” Emma doesn’t move from where she stands at the open passenger door.

“I just need a minute,” Regina replies with a rough voice.

“You can have ten,” Emma tells her as she makes her way around the hood of the car. “Come on. You need to rest.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

“Emma—”

“Not up for discussion,” Emma says as she reaches Regina. She touches her fingertips to one of Regina’s shoulder blades and gasps when brown eyes lock onto hers with unspoken gratitude. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

* * *

A few hours later, Emma goes to pick up a large dinner order from Granny’s while Regina and Henry curl up on the living room couch. She almost doesn’t leave—she certainly doesn’t want to—and stays a few minutes later than intended to watch them from the entryway.

Just as she turns to go, Regina catches her gaze.

“I’m just gonna get our food,” Emma assures her. “I’ll be fifteen minutes tops.”

Regina nods, but Henry requests, “Can you get me a piece of blueberry pie?”

“Uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Emma answers as she tries not to look at Regina for validation that she’s being responsible and a good mom.

But her eyes fall to Regina anyway.

Regina smiles at her before telling both Emma and Henry, “I think it might be okay. Just this once.” She looks up at Emma and adds, “I could use a slice myself.”

Emma smiles back. “Okay. Two slices of blueberry pie it is.”

And ten minutes later, as she’s walking out of the diner with two large bags of takeout, she sees the agents and their rental car, which looks every bit like a government issued vehicle despite it being a random selection at an airport. She slows to a stop and watches them drive on with Greg cuffed in the backseat.

She takes comfort in witnessing his departure, but it would be much more calming if he didn't stare at her coldly for as long as physically possible. It’s only when they turn the corner and head away from the diner that Emma allows herself to shiver in response. She lets it go with a deep breath on her way down the few and narrow stairs outside and then gives Henry and Regina all her attention on the drive home. She keeps her eyes on the road, but her head and her heart are with them even after she walks back into the house.

“I’ve got enough grease and sugar to knock a grown elephant on its ass! Who wants some?”

As expected, Henry bolts out of the living room in his PJs and sock-covered feet. He slides to a stop in front of her, nearly barrels into her, with a face splitting smile on his face. He snatches one of the bags immediately and peeks inside. Then, he scrunches up his face and hands it back with a dissatisfied expression. The other bag, which he takes before he even completes the hand-off with the other one, turns out to be a winner.

He beams at the contents of the bag and dashes back toward the living room just as Regina slowly makes her way down the hall. Where Henry’s shuffling footsteps along the hardwood excitedly close the distance between the two rooms, Regina moves at a snail’s pace and occasionally leans against the wall.

Emma meets her halfway with Henry’s rejected bag of food and stops the brunette with a gentle press of her hands to Regina’s shoulders. “Hey, hey. You look even worse than before.”

Regina, sickly as she currently looks, still shoots her a glare with the same intensity as ever. “Thanks,” the woman dryly responds.

“Suck it up, Madame Mayor,” Emma only semi-jokingly tells her. “Alright, you _really_ need to rest. You’ve been up since before...before Greg.”

Both women look away for a few seconds, although Emma’s eyes never leave Regina. In fact, Emma starts to check Regina for noticeable injuries after having failed to do that sooner than that moment.

She runs her fingers through soft brunette locks and frowns when she almost brushes her thumbs against Regina’s temples. 'Almost' because, just before she can apply pressure, she sees the burn marks. Angry little circles right over where the woman’s veins run beneath damp skin.

“Do you have a fever?”

“Aftershocks,” Regina corrects before pressing a hand to her stomach. It’s not out of nervous habit this time around and Emma sees the difference in the way Regina hunches over like she’s about to throw up.

“Okay, get your butt back on that couch and tell me where I can find extra blankets for you.”

“You think you can just _make_ me sweat this out? I already told you it’s not a fever.”

“Doesn’t mean my suggestion won’t help. Come on.” Emma ushers an unruly Regina back into the living room where Henry sits cross-legged right in the middle of the couch with his takeout container nestled in his lap.

Half his burger dangles over the container, threatening to drop out from between the buns on the opposite end from his mouth. Smeared ketchup takes residence at the corners of his lips, which are just as greasy as his fingers where they leave little indents in the top bun.

“He gets that from you,” Regina grumbles as they continue to make their way across the room.

“Nothing wrong with a healthy appetite,” Emma shoots back with a smile.

“Both of you look like barbarians when you eat. No. Worse. _You_ look like...like…”

“And there’s your proof,” Emma stops the older woman before Regina strains herself. “You can’t even come up with a better insult. You definitely need rest.”

“What? Mom, are you okay?”

Henry’s panic pulls their attention away from each other just long enough for Regina to stand taller and appear every bit as intimidating as she is at full strength when she glares at Emma. Emma, who at least feels guilty enough to grimace because she’d caused Henry to worry _and_  simultaneously woke the beast.

 “She’s tired,” Emma blurts out, which doesn’t really help her smooth things over. Not when Regina’s forehead vein makes an appearance. Or when she cowardly looks away from Regina and immediately sees Henry’s scared eyes looking between them. “Uh, she- Regina- Your mom—” Turns out she’s straining way more than Regina had earlier. She puffs out a heavy exhale. “Kid, the guy that took you also took your mom.”

Henry does everything but gasp as he shifts his full attention to the brunette and grabs her wrists like if he doesn’t hold onto her, she’ll vanish.

“He was even meaner with her because of what she did way before you were born,” Emma adds. “And what happened isn’t really my story to tell, and neither is this part,” she admits under Regina’s murderous gaze, “but I think it needs saying that between him being...mean and using our magic to find you—”

“Magic? You used magic?!” He looks betrayed and upset and still so worried.

And Regina’s beyond furious.

So much for fixing things.

“Wait, ' _our_ magic'? You...you have magic, too?”

Regina, who should be crossing her arms and arching a smug brow at Emma right about now, only seems hurt that Henry’s hurting. Regina clenches her hands in front of her stomach, but she tries to reach out when Henry takes a step back from both of them. The brunette retracts her hands and clenches them again.

It’s understandable when Emma looks at Henry and sees herself from years ago. Terrified and distrusting, as though Emma or Regina would physically hurt him. Except...Emma heard from Henry that Regina once used her magic to restrain the kid, so it’s not exactly an irrational fear.

But Emma definitely didn’t go about this the right away and now they’re all suffering for it.

Emma raises her hands in surrender, tries her hardest to stay rooted to the spot and says, “Here’s the thing, Kid. Magic saved us today. Big time. Mine sparked when I couldn’t find Regina and our...combined magic helped the two of us get to you before anything worse happened.”

“But you both have magic now. She...did this to you,” Henry says before he casts slightly hardened eyes at Regina. He looks away as soon as he sees her, which Emma understands when looking into the other woman’s deeply pained eyes. The blonde wouldn't be able to stay angry looking into them either.

“I honestly don’t know how it happened, Henry, but I’m pretty sure even your mom—no matter how skilled she is—can’t infect me with powers. I’m not Spider Man.”

Henry scrunches up his face like he’s offended. “Of course you’re not Spider Man. I never said you were. I’m ten, not stupid. If infecting someone with magic to make them magical is a thing—”

“It’s not,” Regina quickly tries to teach him.

“Then for you to be Peter Parker,” Henry goes on like Regina had never spoken, “you’d have to be bitten by the person who infected you. My mom’s a lot of things, but she’s not a biter.”

Emma blushes as she remembers hands, lips and most definitely _teeth_ from last night. Laughter, awkward and also genuinely amused, bubbles up inside her. She manages to contain it, even before Regina commands—

“Don’t even think about it.”

Then, the laughter erupts and Emma confesses, “Too late.”

“Forced to co-parent with _you_.” Regina shakes her head. “ _That_ is the real curse.”

“But maybe it’s also a gift,” Emma beams at her, completely missing the now confused look Henry directs at them.

“No,” Regina says. “Just a curse. A long, terrible curse that can’t be broken.”

“Sure it can,” Emma continues on casually. That is until she finishes with, “Make me the happiest woman on Earth and then boom. Or...poof. Whoosh? Whatever the hell it is that happens when rainbows shoot through the town and fix everything.”

A deafening silence follows, and that’s when Emma realizes her mistake. It’s also when Regina tries to ask, “Did you just prop—”

“No! No, no, no. What? No. Nope. That is...not what I did,” Emma rushes to defend herself. “I just meant that when I’m happy, I’m not a pain in the ass.”

“Right,” Regina slowly says. “Also phrased as ‘happy wife, happy life’ by a few in this world.”

“How the hell do you even know that?”

“Are you two dating?”

That shuts them both up as they whip around to look at their son.

“Are you?” Henry asks them a second time and Emma doesn’t have to try very hard to avoid looking at Regina that time. “Because it feels like something happened.”

“You were kidnapped,” Emma reminds him. “That’s what happened.”

“This started before that. You’re...friends now.”

“Well, isn’t that… That’s good, isn’t it?” Regina sounds timid, but her eyes expose the truth. If Henry says no, it’ll break her still sore and mending heart after all she’s dealt with in the last week.

Emma steps closer to them and boldly drapes an arm over Regina’s shoulders. Regina stiffens and Emma’s about to pull away when Regina squirms for a second and then relaxes. “We’re a good team and I’d personally like it to stay that way. As for the magic, it’s a part of Regina. Like a kidney or a lung...or you. And magic can be used for good, too. Case in point, finding you. And that’s all Regina’s used it for lately, by the way.” The light tone fades as she looks from Henry to Regina, holds her gaze for a breath, and back to the kid. “And, Henry, I really don’t want to think about what would have happened if magic hadn’t come in handy today.”

Emma squeezes Regina closer into her side.

Henry takes a moment as he looks between them and Emma and Regina wait calmly. Well, Emma waits calmly. Regina feels like a quaking mess of nerves beneath Emma’s steadfast arm. Of course, it could also be the aftershocks.

Emma rubs Regina’s arm, hoping it’s comforting and a health-related kind of helpful, and catches Henry’s ever-perceptive attention. Normally, she’d stop and pretend not to be embarrassed or outted, but she keeps her hand exactly where it is. Regina stays exactly where she is, too, and that’s more than enough to feed her previously faked confidence.

“Maybe saying no magic ever was a little harsh,” Henry starts to amend. “How about...no more curses or using it against innocent people.”

“There go my plans of using a silencing spell on you,” Regina mutters to the blonde.

“You’d miss the sound of my voice too much.”

“I’d give almost anything not to have you annoy me daily.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself, Madame Mayor. Now sit back down and agree to our son’s terms.”

Regina sighs and walks over to the couch, where Henry stands in front of the armrest like a sentry. The brunette settles on the couch as instructed, but she glares up at Emma for good measure and it’s the most childish thing Emma’s ever seen her do. Emma loves it and fails to hide a smile. That is until, “I think it’s only fair that you agree to his terms as well, seeing as how _you_ have magic, too.”

Emma blinks. She turns from Regina, who’s now in front of her, to where Henry continues to stand off to her side. She feels the tension in her shoulders and the awkwardness she knows she’s showing through her twisted up facial features. She sucks in a deep breath through gritted teeth and makes the inhale sound more like a pained hiss before she acquiesces. “Yeah, I can do that. No dark magic, no curses. Should be simple since I don’t even really know _how_ to use the magic I apparently have, but I agree to the terms all the same.”

“I could always teach you,” Regina offers nonchalantly as she digs through one of the takeout bags.

“Would that really be a good idea?”

“It’s a part of you like it is for me,” Regina explains. “I don’t see why you’d want to deny it, especially since my magic had to be earned. Yours is apparently inherent, which means you’ll likely be stronger than me should you choose to learn control.”

“Ah, but isn’t that the _one_ area you can count on me to be lacking? Control?”

Regina pauses her search inside the bag, which seems almost complete by her dinner setup on the end table next to her side of the couch, and smirks. “It’s a skill. It can be taught. You just need to be disciplined enough.”

“Pretty sure I lack that, too.”

“Perhaps you don’t have the right motivation.”

Regina says it sort of casually. The words flow right out of her mouth like she doesn’t mean for the innuendo they become, but her voice drops just like Emma’s blood flow surges below the waist to one _specific_ spot. Looking at her, Emma also notices how Regina stares at her like she’s already devouring the blonde in her mind.

“Something we should revisit in the morning,” Emma croaks out due to her dry throat. Her panties feel like the most hydrated part of her just then as everything except her own hands venture inside her jeans. That vivid comparison forces Emma to clear her throat and insist, “Movie time!”

And within twenty minutes, Henry’s out like a light in the loveseat. He’s curled up like a cat, bundled beneath two blankets Regina refused to take for herself. It would have irritated Emma if Regina didn’t already have one large and heavy blanket wrapped around her while they shared another large but lighter blanket—the same one they’d shared before—that helped the brunette drift off five minutes later. Henry sleeps through the start of the end credits despite the loud music, but Regina differs from him yet again and jolts awake. In Emma’s lap. Just as Emma’s stopping the movie while still playing with Regina’s hair with the hand not holding the remote.

Regina doesn’t spring into action, doesn’t shoot up into a seated position, but Emma feels and _sees_ the way the brunette spasms.

Emma stills her fingers in sleep-mussed tendrils.

“I fell asleep?”

“Yeah. Henry, too, but the music had no effect on him.”

“My head is in your lap,” Regina needlessly mentions as she starts to sit up. “When did that happen?”

“When my shoulder wasn’t pillow-y enough for you,” Emma informs her.

“When did _that_ happen?”

“Ten minutes after you tried to sleep with your head tipped back on the tops of the back cushions. You kept trying to turn your head left and right and left again and didn’t seem comfortable until you started twisting your body around and settled on a human body pillow.”

“Right, well, I’m not a cuddler. I just need my bed, which is why I didn’t sleep through the night,” Regina reasons.

“I might have believed that before last night, but now I know better. You’re a koala.”

“I am not.”

“You cling to me like a koala clings to a tree.”

“I’m exhausted. Emotionally and physically. And using my magic, using it with yours, took even more out of me. More than I even had to give. It’s not like I’ve done any of this for comfort. Or pleasure.”

“How about letting me kiss you hard against the wall? Did you do that because you were exhausted?”

"I remember last night with  _you pinned_ against the wall," Regina corrects and then hesitates before answering Emma's question. “I’d just lost Daniel and Henry was missing and you… You were… You understood.”

“Understood what it meant? Understood what you were going through? What we _both_ went through last night? What did I understand? Because the only thing I really know right now, without a doubt, is that you and Henry can’t do that to me ever again.”

Regina pulls away and brings her knees to her chest as she sits back against an armrest. “Can’t do what?”

Emma adjusts the shared blanket to drape more of it over her lap and lessen the draft caused by Regina’s movements and the nightmare the blonde had only half-lived. “Leave,” she replies while looking down at where she picks at the fuzzy blanket. “You can’t leave me like that again.”

For a moment, they sit in silence. Emma keeps picking at the blanket, but a nudge to the thigh from Regina’s stocking-covered foot underneath the fleece stops her. She looks up and over, locks eyes with Regina and takes a deep breath.

Emma curls her fingers around the blanket where she’d picked at it and clutches it as though it’s her anchor through her next confession. “There won’t be a day or realm that I’ll ever be ready or willing to lose either of you. It took...twenty-eight _years_ to find my family, Regina. I’m not letting it go. Not Henry, not my parents...not you. Whatever...whatever we are or _aren’t_ to each other, you’re family.” She swallows thickly, scared and nervous and vulnerable, and asks, “Is that okay?”

“Emma…” Regina looks at her fondly, although it feels a hell of a lot more than fondness in the woman’s expressive eyes and trails off for a moment. And just when it seems like Regina’s about to say one thing, the brunette says, “Maybe you should get used to coming here.”

“For joint custody? Visitation rights?”

“No. I mean, yes. You could do that. Or...you could...you could _stay_ here, if you think a little distance might help you patch things up with Snow.”

“I don’t know if—”

“You don’t have to. I’m just giving you an option, should things ever change.”

Emma looks at Regina for a moment. When Regina meets her gaze, she smiles and takes Regina’s hand in hers beneath the blanket. She laces their fingers and says, “I think they already have.”

* * *

**Washington, D.C.**

_10:00 PM that same night_

 

Mulder hears the casual cadence of Scully’s heels against the floor before the redhead almost cautiously enters the basement office. He’s looking away from the door, keeps his back to Scully as he continues to take in the space that doesn’t quite feel right anymore.

“Something’s missing,” Scully says when she stops, her heels soundless where she stands somewhere just inside the open door.

“Yeah, the cleaning crew,” Mulder grumbles with a light and admittedly childish kick to one of the legs of the desk. He turns around and adds, “It’s not charred anymore, but it’s still a mess. Careful not to trip over the tarp.” He points to the blue material half-crumpled up and half-splayed out near the new filing cabinet and then furrows his brow at the object tucked under her arm. “What’ve you got there, Partner?”

Scully pouts and arches both eyebrows as she shifts to pull the cylindrical item out in front of herself. “This? For you.”

Mulder hums, “Me?” and points at himself. It causes Scully to smile at him, the way she does when she’s amused but also trying to hide it. He notices how she purses her lips and attempts to downturn the corners of her mouth to hide it. He smiles, too.

Scully offers it to him. It’s big enough that their fingers don’t brush, but he grabs the rounded cardboard exterior closer to Scully’s hand than necessary before taking it from her.

He pops the white, plastic lid almost immediately and tells her, “Looks like Christmas came early this year.” He glances at her just as the woman rolls her eyes at him, still looking amused as she does. He turns the case over so whatever’s inside falls into his palm. It’s rolled up to fit inside the casing and feels like paper. As he makes an internal guess as to what it could be, he proves himself right as he unrolls the gift.

“It’s not the same, but...” Scully looks and then motions around the room.

Mulder tosses the case onto the desk, looks up at her when she trails off and he nods. “Not much is these days. I’m sure even another visit to Storybrooke would be enough to prove that.” He looks back down at the poster in his hands and brightens at the large image of a UFO and accompanying text that reads: _I want to believe_.

He keeps smiling and moves toward the recently repaired, and repainted, wall behind the desk. “Hand me some tape, will ya, Scully?”

Scully laughs, but it partly comes out like a scoff. “From where, Mulder? You think because someone left two cans of paint and a tarp behind, they also restocked the office supplies?”

“You know, your lips are saying one thing, but the sound of your footsteps approaching tells me another,” he quips as he stands on the desk chair to get the poster placement just right. He confirms that Scully’s behind the desk as well, between him and the far top drawer where she begins her search. He breathes out a little laugh. “Any luck?” 

“Not yet,” Scully grumbles after he turns back to the poster and double checks that it’s still straight. One drawer closes and another opens. “Well, what do you know.”

He doesn’t hear Scully close the drawer before he feels something tapping against his back. He looks over and down as he repositions his arm to look at the redhead standing below him. She holds a roll of duct tape in her hand, raised between them in line with his hip. He’s about to request that she tear off a piece for him when she sighs and lowers the tape just out of his reach. He watches as she does what he would have asked and then some as she folds the piece into a square with the sticky side out before lifting the finger she presses it to toward him.

“Thanks,” he says as he maneuvers himself to accept the piece without dropping a corner or side of the poster. When he turns his attention back to the poster, tape piece stuck to his finger now instead of hers, he hears Scully rip another piece and the two work in silence until the poster rests neatly on the wall.

He admires his handiwork for a few seconds, hands on his hips, and exhales audibly before he carefully turns around in the chair and tries to get down. He’s shaky during his turn and wobbles when he bends his knees to keep his balance, but Scully’s there. Even in heels, she’s steady on the ground as he places his hands on her shoulders and she rests her hands on top of his. She steadies _him_ as he jumps off the spin-and-recline-capable chair onto the floor between it and her. “Thanks,” he repeats as he looks up from their feet nearly touching to look into her eyes.

She smiles at him for a brief moment before they lock onto each other and then there’s a moment. A quiet, still moment when Mulder’s all too aware that his hands still grasp Scully’s shoulders and the look in her eyes convinces him that she’s equally as aware. 

He clears his throat and drops his arms back to his sides as he takes a step around her, toward the side of the desk. “We have another case,” he announces as he takes a folder from the front corner of the desk.

“Already? We only just got back from New York…” Scully checks her watch, “an hour ago.”

“Skinner threw us a bone. Something’s happening in Arizona that might prove what happened after Dallas. The bees, the virus, everything we survived in Antarctica. We can get the proof we need to officially be reassigned back here. _Officially_ work more X-files.”

Scully sighs. “Mulder…”

“Scully, the committee hearings were a joke. They’re hiding something. They always have been. Take this case with me. Help me find what we need to keep searching for the truth.”

She stares at him with her mouth open like she’s seconds away from a refute that never comes, even when she slides her tongue across the roof of her mouth and shifts her jaw as though to force the words out. Instead, she tiredly replies, “What happened in Arizona?”

Mulder smiles and opens the folder to show her as he steps up beside her. “I thought you’d never ask.”

She releases another sigh, heavier and more long-suffering than the last, but takes one half of the folder in her hand to hold it open alongside him. He sees her cringe at the crime scene photo of the victim.

“It’s not pretty, and it’s the same as what I saw in Antarctica.”

“You also claim you saw a spaceship in Antarctica,” Scully dryly responds.

“You were there, Scully! I didn’t make that up. That spaceship was there.”

“I was barely conscious. I wasn’t even sure it was _you_ beside me in that snow, freezing our asses off.”

“It’s pretty hard to miss a spaceship that huge. It blocked out the entire sky!”

“So you say, Mulder.”

He huffs and then mutters, “You saw it. You just don’t want to admit it.”

“Right. And Ruby Lucas really is a werewolf, Regina Mills has somehow been frozen in time and it's allowed her to physically remain in her thirties when she’s actually in her sixties, and her son was abducted by aliens instead of a vengeful and unstable man.”

“Aside from Greg Mendel, we didn’t actually prove the other things weren’t true,” he points out.

“We also didn’t confirm them. The only secret in that town, Mulder, is that the sheriff and the mayor are more involved than they’ll admit.”

“Which is a government conspiracy if you think about it.”

She frowns at him.

He explains, “They’re both town officials. They’re part of the government.”

“You’re grasping at straws. Just tell me about the case before we’re on the plane. I assume you already have the tickets.”

He turns and slips them off the desk near where he’d grabbed the folder. He flashes them at her with a quick smile and says, “We leave first thing tomorrow.”

Scully rolls her eyes. “Even more reason to know what the hell I’m getting into,” before snatching one of the tickets out of his hand. “Storybrooke’s starting to sound like a resort right about now.”

“We can always go back.”

“For our _real_ honeymoon?” She’s teasing. It’s in the playful tone of her voice and the more serious look in her eyes where they stare unblinkingly at him beneath expectantly raised eyebrows.

“In your dreams, Scully,” he teases back with a wide smile. “Feel free to share them with me some time.”

Scully yanks the file from Mulder’s hand and starts to walk out of the office. “You’re the one with the wild imagination, Mulder. I think the only one who’s dreaming here is you.”

She doesn’t stop or even look over her shoulder when she speaks, just keeps walking. Down the dimly lit hallway and right to the elevator while reading up on what’s in the file. She encourages him, drives him, implores him to run after her. To run _to_ her.

And he does.


End file.
